Letter from Trappist nuns in Syria: Fear and helplessness at impending U.S. attack

Obama frames a U.S. military intervention against Syria as America’s necessary moral response to horrible offense against human rights — the Assad regime’s purported deployment on August 21, of chemical weapons (sarin nerve gas) on innocent civilians in a suburb outside of Damascas. (Note: Whether the Assad regime is responsible for the chemical attack is very much disputed. See “Article cited by Limbaugh on Syrian chemical attack being a U.S. false flag“.)

And yet, as the pic below points out, there have been — and are — countless human rights abuses across the world more egregious than the Syrian chemical attack, but the United States does nothing. Which, of course, begs the question:

Why the selective moral outrage in the case of Syria?

What makes the Syrian chemical attack so extraordinarily evil — more evil than, say, what the psychopathic regime in North Korea do to their people — which warrants the United States starting yet another war?

Has it ever occurred to Obama, Kerry, the senators who voted yesterday to authorize Obama’s war in Syria, that our “humanitarian intervention” will itself be the cause of deaths, pain, suffering, and hardships for the beleaguered Syrian people? That our “intervention” in the name of human rights itself violates the human rights and dignity of the Syrian people?

“Trappists” is the common name of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, a Roman Catholic religious order of cloistered contemplative monks and nuns who follow the Rule of St. Benedict.

In March 2005, a small group of Trappist nuns from Tuscany settled in Aleppo, Syria, to found a new monastery serving isolated Christian communities in a land that’s predominantly Muslim but which is home to the most ancient of Christian traditions.

Below is a translation of a letter written on August 29 by the Trappist nuns, as they — and the people of Syria — await Obama’s decision on bombing Syria. The letter is seeringly truthful and heartbreaking.

Please get this letter to as many people as possible via Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.

Today we have no words, except those of the Psalms that the liturgical prayer puts onto our lips in these days:

Rebuke the Beast of the Reeds, that herd of bulls, that people of calves…oh God, scatter the people who delight in war…Yahweh has leaned down from the heights of his sanctuary, has looked down from heaven to earth to listen to the sighing of the captive, and set free those condemned to death…Listen, God, to my voice as I plead, protect my life from fear of the enemy; hide me from the league of the wicked, from the gang of evil-doers. They sharpen their tongues like a sword, aim their arrow of poisonous abuse…They support each other in their evil designs, they discuss how to lay their snares. “Who will see us?” they say. He will do that, he who penetrates human nature to its depths, the depths of the heart…Break into song for my God, to the tambourine, sing in honor of the Lord, to the cymbal, let psalm and canticle mingle for him, extol his name, invoke it…For the Lord is a God who breaks battle-lines! … Lord, you are great, you are glorious, wonderfully strong, unconquerable.

We look at the people around us, our day workers who are all here as if suspended, stunned: “They’ve decided to attack us.” Today we went to Tartous…we felt the anger, the helplessness, the inability to formulate a sense to all this: the people trying their best to work and to live normally. You see the farmers watering their land, parents buying notebooks for the schools that are about to begin, unknowing children asking for a toy or an ice cream…you see the poor, so many of them, trying to scrape together a few coins. The streets are full of the “inner” refugees of Syria, who have come from all over to the only area left that is still relatively liveable…. You see the beauty of these hills, the smile on people’s faces, the good-natured gaze of a boy who is about to join the army and gives us the two or three peanuts he has in his pocket as a token of “togetherness”…. And then you remember that they have decided to bomb us tomorrow. … Just like that. Because “it’s time to do something,” as it is worded in the statements of the important men, who will be sipping their tea tomorrow as they watch TV to see how effective their humanitarian intervention will be….

Will they make us breathe the toxic gases of the depots they hit, tomorrow, so as to punish us for the gases we have already breathed in?

The people are straining their eyes and ears in front of the television: all they’re waiting for is a word from Obama!

A word from Obama? Will the Nobel Peace Prize winner drop his sentence of war onto us? Despite all justice, all common sense, all mercy, all humility, all wisdom?

The Pope has spoken up, patriarchs and bishops have spoken up, numberless witnesses have spoken up, analysts and people of experience have spoken up, even the opponents of the regime have spoken up…. Yet here we all are, waiting for just one word from the great Obama? And if it weren’t him, it would be someone else. It isn’t he who is “the great one,” it is the Evil One who these days is really acting up.

The problem is that it has become too easy to pass lies off as noble gestures, to pass ruthless self-interest off as a search for justice, to pass the need to appear [strong] and to wield power off as a “moral responsibility not to look away…”

And despite all our globalizations and sources of information, it seems nothing can be verified. It seems that there is no such thing as a minimal scrap of truth … That is, they don’t want there to be any truth; while actually a truth does exist, and anyone honest would be able to find it, if they truly sought it out together, if they weren’t prevented by those who are in the service of other interests.

There is something wrong, and it is something very serious…because the consequences will be wrought on the lives of an entire population…it is in the blood that fills our streets, our eyes, our hearts.

Yet what use are words anymore? All has been destroyed: a nation destroyed, generations of young people exterminated, children growing up wielding weapons, women winding up alone and targeted by various types of violence…families, traditions, homes, religious buildings, monuments that tell and preserve history and therefore the roots of a people…all destroyed. …

As Christians we can at least offer all this up to the mercy of God, unite it to the blood of Christ, which carries out the redemption of the world in all those who suffer.

They are trying to kill hope, but we must hold on to it with all our might.

To those who truly have a heart for Syria (for mankind, for truth…) we ask for prayer…abounding, heartfelt, courageous prayer.

An intercept of Syrian military officials discussing the strike was among low-level staff, with no direct evidence tying the attack back to an Assad insider or even a senior Syrian commander, the officials said.

So while Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that links between the attack and the Assad government are “undeniable,” U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad’s orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said.

***

Another possibility that officials would hope to rule out: that stocks had fallen out of the government’s control and were deployed by rebels in a callous and calculated attempt to draw the West into the war.

With the United States threatening to attack Syria, U.S. and allied intelligence services are still trying to work out who ordered the poison gas attack on rebel-held neighborhoods near Damascus.

No direct link to President Bashar al-Assad or his inner circle has been publicly demonstrated, and some U.S. sources say intelligence experts are not sure whether the Syrian leader knew of the attack before it was launched or was only informed about it afterward.

Indeed, numerous intelligence officers say that the rebels likely carried out the August 21st attack.

The Obama administration has selectively used intelligence to justify military strikes on Syria, former military officers with access to the original intelligence reports say, in a manner that goes far beyond what critics charged the Bush administration of doing in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war.

According to these officers, who served in top positions in the United States, Britain, France, Israel, and Jordan, a Syrian military communication intercepted by Israel’s famed Unit 8200 electronic intelligence outfit has been doctored so that it leads a reader to just the opposite conclusion reached by the original report.

According to the doctored report, the chemical attack was carried out by the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Army, an elite unit commanded by Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother.

However, the original communication intercepted by Unit 8200 between a major in command of the rocket troops assigned to the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division, and the general staff, shows just the opposite.

The general staff officer asked the major if he was responsible for the chemical weapons attack. From the tone of the conversation, it was clear that “the Syrian general staff were out of their minds with panic that an unauthorized strike had been launched by the 155th Brigade in express defiance of their instructions,” the former officers say.

According to the transcript of the original Unit 8200 report, the major “hotly denied firing any of his missiles” and invited the general staff to come and verify that all his weapons were present.

The report contains a note at the end that the major was interrogated by Syrian intelligence for three days, then returned to command of his unit. “All of his weapons were accounted for,” the report stated.

***

An Egyptian intelligence report describes a meeting in Turkey between military intelligence officials from Turkey and Qatar and Syrian rebels. One of the participants states, “there will be a game changing event on August 21st” that will “bring the U.S. into a bombing campaign” against the Syrian regime.

The chemical weapons strike on Moudhamiya, an area under rebel control, took place on August 21. “Egyptian military intelligence insists it was a combined Turkish/Qatar/rebel false flag operation,” said a source familiar with the report.

Agents provacateurs are as old as warfare itself. What better than a false flag attack, staged by al Qaeda and its al Nusra front allies in Syria, to drag the United States into a war?

And 12 very high-level former intelligence officials wrote the following memorandum to Obama today:

We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”

***

There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war.

According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured.

We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons.

In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.

Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria.

At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government

The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.

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Who’s Lying? Brennan, Obama, or Both?

Editor Note: Despite the Obama administration’s supposedly “high confidence” regarding Syrian government guilt over the Aug. 21 chemical attack near Damascus, a dozen former U.S. military and intelligence officials are telling President Obama that they are picking up information that undercuts the Official Story.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap?

Precedence: IMMEDIATE

We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”

We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandumimmediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.

Secretary of State John Kerry departs for a Sept. 6 trip to Europe where he plans to meet with officials to discuss the Syrian crisis and other issues. (State Department photo)

The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond … the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today.

Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you.

We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.

Intelligence Summary or Political Ploy?

That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.”

This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”

Déjà Fraud: This brings a flashback to the famous Downing Street Minutes of July 23, 2002, on Iraq, The minutes record the Richard Dearlove, then head of British intelligence, reporting to Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior officials that President Bush had decided to remove Saddam Hussein through military action that would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” Dearlove had gotten the word from then-CIA Director George Tenet whom he visited at CIA headquarters on July 20.

The discussion that followed centered on the ephemeral nature of the evidence, prompting Dearlove to explain: “But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” We are concerned that this is precisely what has happened with the “intelligence” on Syria.

The Intelligence

There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war.

According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured.

We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons.

In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.

Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria.

At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government

The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.

Cui bono?

That the various groups trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have ample incentive to get the U.S. more deeply involved in support of that effort is clear. Until now, it has not been quite as clear that the Netanyahu government in Israel has equally powerful incentive to get Washington more deeply engaged in yet another war in the area. But with outspoken urging coming from Israel and those Americans who lobby for Israeli interests, this priority Israeli objective is becoming crystal clear.

Reporter Judi Rudoren, writing from Jerusalem in an important article in Friday’s New York Times addresses Israeli motivation in an uncommonly candid way. Her article, titled “Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria,” notes that the Israelis have argued, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, is no outcome. Rudoren continues:

“For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

“‘This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,’ said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. ‘Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.’”

We think this is the way Israel’s current leaders look at the situation in Syria, and that deeper U.S. involvement – albeit, initially, by “limited” military strikes – is likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict in Syria. The longer Sunni and Shia are at each other’s throats in Syria and in the wider region, the safer Israel calculates that it is.

That Syria’s main ally is Iran, with whom it has a mutual defense treaty, also plays a role in Israeli calculations. Iran’s leaders are not likely to be able to have much military impact in Syria, and Israel can highlight that as an embarrassment for Tehran.

Iran’s Role

Iran can readily be blamed by association and charged with all manner of provocation, real and imagined. Some have seen Israel’s hand in the provenance of the most damaging charges against Assad regarding chemical weapons and our experience suggests to us that such is supremely possible.

Possible also is a false-flag attack by an interested party resulting in the sinking or damaging, say, of one of the five U.S. destroyers now on patrol just west of Syria. Our mainstream media could be counted on to milk that for all it’s worth, and you would find yourself under still more pressure to widen U.S. military involvement in Syria – and perhaps beyond, against Iran.

Iran has joined those who blame the Syrian rebels for the August 21 chemical incident, and has been quick to warn the U.S. not to get more deeply involved. According to the Iranian English-channel Press TV, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif has claimed: “The Syria crisis is a trap set by Zionist pressure groups for [the United States].”

Actually, he may be not far off the mark. But we think your advisers may be chary of entertaining this notion. Thus, we see as our continuing responsibility to try to get word to you so as to ensure that you and other decision makers are given the full picture.

Inevitable Retaliation

We hope your advisers have warned you that retaliation for attacks on Syrian are not a matter of IF, but rather WHERE and WHEN. Retaliation is inevitable. For example, terrorist strikes on U.S. embassies and other installations are likely to make what happened to the U.S. “Mission” in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, look like a minor dust-up by comparison. One of us addressed this key consideration directly a week ago in an article titled “Possible Consequences of a U.S. Military Attack on Syria – Remembering the U.S. Marine Barracks Destruction in Beirut, 1983.”

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East (ret.)

Todd Pierce, US Army Judge Advocate General (ret.)

Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army, Iraq

Coleen Rowley, Division Council & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)

Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret); Foreign Service Officer (ret.)

This Memorandum was posted first on Consortiumnews.com.

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Who Is Going To Buy Our Debt If This War Causes China, Russia And The Rest Of The World To Turn On Us?

By Michael Snyder, on September 6th, 2013

Can the U.S. really afford to greatly anger the rest of the world when they are the ones that are paying our bills? What is going to happen if China, Russia and many other large nations stop buying our debt and start rapidly dumping U.S. debt that they already own? If the United States is not very careful, it is going to pay a tremendous economic price for taking military action in Syria. At this point, survey after survey has shown that the American people are overwhelmingly against an attack on Syria, people around the globe are overwhelmingly against an attack on Syria, and it looks like the U.S. Congress is even going to reject it. But Barack Obama is not backing down. In fact, ABC News is reporting that plans are now being made for a "significantly larger" strike on Syria than most experts had expected.

If Obama insists on going forward with this, it will be the greatest foreign policy disaster in modern American history.

Right now, both Russia and China are strongly warning Obama not to attack Syria. And Russia is not just warning Obama with words. According to Bloomberg, Russia has sent quite a collection of warships into the region…

Russia is sending three more ships to the eastern Mediterranean to bolster its fleet there as a U.S. Senate panel will consider President Barack Obama’s request for authority to conduct a military strike on Syria.

Russia is sending two destroyers, including the Nastoichivy, the flagship of the Baltic Fleet, and the Moskva missile cruiser to the region, Interfax reported today, citing an unidentified Navy official. That follows last week’s dispatch of a reconnaissance ship to the eastern Mediterranean, four days after the deployment of an anti-submarine ship and a missile cruiser to the area, which were reported by Interfax. Syria hosts Russia’s only military facility outside the former Soviet Union, at the port of Tartus.

China is also letting it be known that they absolutely do not want Obama to hit Syria. On Friday, China issued a warning about what military conflict in the Middle East could do to "the global economy"…

"Military action would have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on the oil price – it will cause a hike in the oil price."

And according to Debka, China has also deployed "a number of warships" to the region…

Western naval sources reported Friday that a Chinese landing craft, the Jinggangshan, with a 1,000-strong marine battalion had reached the Red Sea en route for the Mediterranean off Syria. According to DEBKAfile, Beijing has already deployed a number of warships opposite Syria in secret. If the latest report is confirmed, this will be the largest Chinese deployment in the Middle East in its naval history.

If the U.S. attacks Syria, Russia and China probably will not take immediate military action against us.

But they could choose to hit us where it really hurts.

According to the U.S. Treasury, foreigners now hold approximately 5.6 trillion dollars of our debt. Over the past couple of decades, the proportion of our debt owned by foreigners has grown tremendously, and today we very heavily depend on nations such as China to buy our debt.

-Rising bond yields will cause mortgage rates to skyrocket. In fact, we are already starting to see this happen. This week the average rate on a 30 year mortgage hit 4.57 percent.

-Higher interest rates will mean a slowdown in economic activity at a time when we definitely cannot afford it.

-As economic activity slows down, that will be very bad for stocks. When the next great stock market crash happens (and it is coming), equity investors could end up losing trillions of dollars of wealth.

-Of course the biggest threat of all is the 441 trillion dollar interest rate derivatives time bomb that is sitting out there. Rapidly rising interest rates could potentially bring down several of our "too big to fail" banks in rapid succession and throw us into the greatest financial crisis the nation has ever seen.

Are you starting to get the picture?

And the 3 percent mark is just the beginning. Brent Schutte, a market strategist for BMO Private Bank, told CNBC that he expects the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries to eventually go up to 6 or 7 percent…

"4 percent (on 10-year Treasurys) somewhere around the end of the year to early next year would be a good intermediate-term level. And if you look over the longer term, I don’t think that 6 or 7 percent is out of the question."

If that happens, we will experience a full blown financial meltdown.

Of course it would greatly help if Obama would back down and not attack Syria. As Vladimir Putin noted at the G20 summit, large nations such as India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia are all strongly against the U.S. taking military action…

In reply to the question what other country in the world may theoretically be subjected to aggression similar to that Syria is facing, Putin said, “I do not want to think that any other country will be subjected to any external aggression.”

A military action against Syria will have a highly deplorable impact on international security at large, Putin emphasized.

He said he was surprised to see that ever more participants in the summit, including the leader of India, Brazil, the South African Republic, and Indonesia were speaking vehemently against a possible military operation in Syria.

Putin cited the words of the South African President, Jacob Zuma, who said many countries were feeling unprotected against such actions undertaken by stronger countries.

“Given the conditions as they, how would you convince the North Koreans, for example, to give up their nuclear program,” he said. “Just tell them to put everything into storage today and they’ll be pulled to bits tomorrow.”

He underlined the presence of only one method for maintaining stability – “an unconditional observance of international law norms.”

Can we really afford to have most of the international community turn on us and quit buying our debt?

In fact, as the Washington Post reported the other day, Secretary of State John Kerry has even admitted that they are even willing to pay all of the costs of a U.S. military campaign that would overthrow Assad…

Secretary of State John Kerry said at Wednesday’s hearing that Arab counties have offered to pay for the entirety of unseating President Bashar al-Assad if the United States took the lead militarily.

"With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes," Kerry said. "They have. That offer is on the table."

Asked by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) about how much those countries would contribute, Kerry said they have offered to pay for all of a full invasion.

"In fact, some of them have said that if the United States is prepared to go do the whole thing the way we’ve done it previously in other places, they’ll carry that cost," Kerry said. "That’s how dedicated they are at this. That’s not in the cards, and nobody’s talking about it, but they’re talking in serious ways about getting this done."

Why aren’t we hearing more about this in the news?

Fortunately, despite the relentless propaganda coming from the mainstream media, a lot of members of Congress are choosing to take a stand against this war. For example, U.S. Representative Tom Marino recently shared the following about why he is voting against military action in Syria…

Secretary Hagel could not tell lawmakers who the U.S. could trust among the Syrian opposition, stating "that’s not my business to trust." Like many Americans, I believe it is our duty as decision makers to be informed and confident when making choices – especially in those choices that could result in sending U.S. troops or money abroad. It is no wonder Secretary Hagel isn’t in the business to trust when more players are added daily to the growing list of ‘Syrian opposition’—many of them jihadist, terrorists, known Al Qaeda affiliates, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and enemies of the U.S. and our allies. To simplify, the Secretary of Defense was unable to tell us, after nearly three years of the Syrian Civil War, who the good guys are or if there are any at all.

And Marino is very right. There are no "good guys" in Syria. The "rebels" are murderous jihadist psychotics that would be even worse than Assad if they took power.

For much more on what the mainstream media is not telling you about the war in Syria, check out a stunning video report from investigative reporter Ben Swann that you can find right here.

The picture above and below comes from the official Facebook page of one of the "rebel groups" in Syria.

I am sure that you do not need me to point out that the White House is burning in the background of the picture.

These are the people that Obama wants to help?

According to NBC News, the rebels are also displaying images of the black flag of al-Qaeda on Facebook too…

The image is one of eight photos posted on the official Facebook page of the “Al-Aqsa Islamic Brigades,” a small armed Sunni rebel faction fighting with the Free Syrian Army, the main umbrella military organization of the opposition forces. Two other photos posted on the group’s page feature the widely recognized black flag of the al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist group, which operates freely in Syria.

Let’s assume for a moment that Obama is successful in Syria and that Assad is overthrown.

That would hand Syria over to al-Qaeda.

Once in power, the "rebels" would slaughter or force the conversion of millions of Christians, Jews and non-Sunni Muslims that have been living peacefully in Syria for centuries.

To those that would support this war, I would ask you this question…

Is that what you want?

Do you want the blood of millions of Christians, Jews and non-Sunni Muslims on your hands?

We look at the people around us, our day workers who are all here as if suspended, stunned: “They’ve decided to attack us.” Today we went to Tartous…we felt the anger, the helplessness, the inability to formulate a sense to all this: the people trying their best to work and to live normally. You see the farmers watering their land, parents buying notebooks for the schools that are about to begin, unknowing children asking for a toy or an ice cream…you see the poor, so many of them, trying to scrape together a few coins. The streets are full of the “inner” refugees of Syria, who have come from all over to the only area left that is still relatively liveable…. You see the beauty of these hills, the smile on people’s faces, the good-natured gaze of a boy who is about to join the army and gives us the two or three peanuts he has in his pocket as a token of “togetherness”…. And then you remember that they have decided to bomb us tomorrow. … Just like that. Because “it’s time to do something,” as it is worded in the statements of the important men, who will be sipping their tea tomorrow as they watch TV to see how effective their humanitarian intervention will be….

After being linked by the Drudge Report, Fox News covered an Infowars exclusive story featuring a Syrian rebel admitting to using chemical weapons in order to follow Osama Bin Laden’s mantra of killing women and children.

The Fox News story concerned the overwhelming amount of evidence that the Obama administration would be backing terrorists who have been responsible for atrocities if it went ahead with an attack on Syria.

Lawmakers who were early champions of a U.S. strike on Assad regime targets in Syria have stayed mum as video clips emerge appearing to show opposition soldiers both killing unarmed men and indicating they have possession of chemical weapons.

The latest, a video on InfoWars.com, purported to show a rebel militant in Syria claiming to have chemical weapons, and saying he’s willing to target women and children. The video, which FoxNews.com has not been able to independently authenticate, only adds to the confusion over which side has the moral high ground and the reasons for U.S. military action in Syria.

The Fox report also links to a separate video which shows rebel commanders discussing chemical weapons. “The message is if the West doesn’t act, we (the rebels) too will have no red lines, and will use chemical weapons,” according to an analysis by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Watch the original video of the rebel admitting to chemical weapons use below. The footage has already been viewed over 100,000 times on YouTube.

Following an informal meeting on Thursday between President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Putin made clear that he would continue to provide all manner of military aid to Syria’s President Assad.

S-300 similar to ones given to Assad by Russia. Credit: ShinePhantom via Wikimedia Commons

Such aid would include completing delivery of the S-300 defense missiles ordered by Syria but temporarily delayed over payment issues. The S-300 radar system can simultaneously track up to 100 different targets and deploy as many as 12 missiles in retaliation inside five minutes.

Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.) quizzed General Martin Dempsey, chairman of Obama’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the dangers of such an action: “We can certainly say that Russia would have options to strike us in that theater in retaliation for us striking their ally.… [What would the United States do] if Russia decided to strike at us…?” Dempsey demurred, saying only that “it wouldn’t be helpful in this setting to speculate about that.” But a retaliatory action of some sort by Russia is one possible consequence of a U.S. attack on Syria.

Another possible consequence came to light when the State Department intercepted an order from the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Qasem Soleimani, to Shiite militia groups operating in Iraq, telling them that that they must “be prepared to respond with force” if the United States does launch an attack on Syria. An attack on Syria would put the U.S. embassy in Iraq’s capital city, Baghdad, one of the largest American diplomatic facilities in the world, at severe risk. In addition, Iran’s fleet of small, fast, highly maneuverable, and dangerous water craft could target one or more of the American destroyers currently lying off the coast of Syria awaiting instructions from Washington. The U.S. military is taking precautions to aid in the evacuation of American diplomatic compounds in the area, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, has already begun “making preparations … for potential retaliation against U.S. embassies and other interests in the Middle East and North Africa.”

Some of those “interests” are located inside Israel, which has promised to retaliate against any attack mounted in response to Obama’s “punitive war” against Assad.

Other consequences of Obama’s saber-rattling are beginning to show up in polls taken over the Syrian issue. Just since the middle of July, NBC News, CBS News, and Quinnipiac polls have shown Americans’ increasing unhappiness with Obama’s latest adventure, with the big Mack-daddy of them all, Gallup, showing that 53 percent of those polled disapprove of Obama’s foreign policy moves, while just 40 percent approve, a remarkable negative spread of 13 percent.

Such dissent is showing up in Congress as well. On Tuesday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted underwhelmingly, 10-7, for a watered-down version of a resolution allowing Obama to proceed with his plans to attack Syria, but with just a 60-day window with a possible 30-day extension before requiring him to cease operations. In addition to the demand for “no boots on the ground,” the resolution required the White House to come up with plans to install a negotiated settlement of differences between warring parties at the end of those 60 days. Of the 18 members of the committee, five Republicans and two Democrats voted “no” while liberal Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) voted “present.”

Liberals in the House of Representatives are also beginning to feel the heat and are starting to see the light. Liberal Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) told reporters, “I am not voting [for] my party. I am not voting [for] my president. I am voting [for] my country.” Echoing that sentiment was Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), a prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus (who also signed a letter last week urging the president to seek authorization before attacking Syria), who said, “If I had to vote today, I would cast a ‘no’ vote.” Liberal Rep. Rick Nolan (D-Minn.) not only is opposing Obama’s adventure — saying, “I am more convinced than ever that this will be a tragic mistake” — but he is also actively working to round up support against such authorization.

The president is sitting on an ice cube that is melting. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee announced the results of its own poll of 55,000 of its members on Wednesday, showing that 73 percent oppose Obama taking action in Syria. It sent a memo to all Democrats in Congress entitled “Your base opposes military action in Syria” and launched a telephone campaign to those members to pressure them to vote “no.”

When the Washington Post conducted a “whip count,” it found that of the 371 House members it contacted, 204 of them were either against authorization or leaning that way, while it could find but 24 members in favor. And when interviewed by Newsmax, veteran pollster Matt Towery of Insider/Advantage Polling, remarked: “I think the president is in extraordinarily deep trouble, as are the House members [John Boehner and Eric Cantor] who put their necks out on this.”

Obama is finding that there are unintended consequences of his desire to validate his “red line” warning issued last summer by punishing Assad for allegedly murdering more than 1,000 civilians with chemical weapons. He’ll also discover that the quagmire of conflicting interests in the Middle East guarantees him no easy exit without significant damage to his credibility and prestige. In what the Washington Post called one of the “most amazing letter[s] to the editor ever written,” well-known Egyptian blogger The Big Pharaoh explained the president’s predicament:

Sir:

Iran is backing Assad. Gulf states are against Assad!

Assad is against the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against [Egypt’s] General Sisi.

But Gulf states are pro-Sisi! Which means they are against the Muslim Brotherhood!

Iran is pro-Hamas, but Hamas is backing the Muslim Brotherhood!

Obama is backing the Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the U.S.!

Gulf states are pro-U.S. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro-Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states!

Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.

With Obama’s resolution barely squeaking by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and with mounting opposition to such unilateral adventurism, there are additional unintended consequences. Wrote Democratic pollster Doug Schoen:

Obama will seek to blame the Republicans if he loses the vote on Syria, as he has with issue after issue, time after time. On this occasion, I believe the strategy will fail — if only because as the United States comes to look weaker and weaker, so too will President Obama.

I don’t think this will be a history-making failure on Obama’s part, because I think his presidency is basically at a point where it is viewed as ineffective and pretty much at its end anyway.

[But] it would be very difficult for Boehner and Cantor to be reelected to leadership in the House, with this sort of revolt on their hands.

With the piling up of unintended consequences over Obama’s threatened military action against Syria, there appears to be only one conclusion: Obama’s image as savior and statesman will have been irrevocably shattered, Republican leadership in the House will likely have to be find other work after the 2014 elections, and Syria will be left to its own devices without the military “assistance” of the United States.

Mounting pressure for a Western strike on Syria has seen naval forces both friendly and hostile to Damascus build up off the embattled country’s coastline.

Credit: Public Domain

The potential of a US strike against Syria in response to an August 21 chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb gained steam on Wednesday, when a resolution backing the use of force against President Bashar Assad’s government cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a 10-7 vote.

President Obama has decided to put off military action until at least September 9, when the seemingly recalcitrant US House of Representatives reconvenes to vote on the measure.

Following the August 21 Ghouta Attack, which killed anywhere between 355 to 1,729 people, the diplomatic scramble to launch or stave off a military strike on Syria was mirrored by the movement of naval forces in the Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Syria.

The deployment of US and allied naval warships in the region has been matched by the deployment of Russian naval warships in the region.

While the Western vessels have in many cases been deployed in the event a military strike against Syria gets a green light, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Russia’s naval presence is needed to protect national security interests and is not a threat to any nation.

Below is a brief summary of the naval hardware currently amassed off Syria’s shores.

USA

The US Navy has five Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers off the coast of Syria, which its top admiral says is “fully ready” for a wide range of possible actions.

The USS Ramage, USS Mahan, USS Gravely and USS Barry are each armed with dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 nautical miles (1,151 miles) and are used for precise targeting.

The ships are also equipped with surface-to-air missiles capable of defending the vessels from air attacks.

On August 29, the USS Stout was sent to relieve the USS Mahan, but a defense official told AFP that both ships might remain in the area for the time being.

Adm. Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations, told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday that the US ships are prepared for what he called a “vast spectrum of operations,” including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets in Syria, as was done in Libya in 2011, and protecting themselves in the event of retaliation, AP reports.

In addition to the destroyers, the United States may well have one of its four guided missile submarines off the coast of Syria. At one time these subs were equipped with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles. Nowadays, they are capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

It was also announced on Monday that the US had deployed the USS San Antonio, an amphibious transport ship, to the Eastern Mediterranean.

The USS San Antonio, with several helicopters and hundreds of Marines on board, is “on station in the Eastern Mediterranean” but “has received no specific tasking,” a defense official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The deployment of the USS Antonio comes despite promises from President Obama that no amphibious landing is on the agenda, as the US has ostensibly ruled out any “boots on the ground.”

While the wording of the draft resolution set to be put before the House does not permit a ground invasion, the wording of the text could potentially allow troops to carry out non-offensive operations within Syria, including securing chemical weapons stockpiles and production facilities.

On Monday, it was also announced the USS Nimitz super carrier had moved into the Red Sea, though it had not been given orders to be part of the planning for a limited US military strike on Syria, US officials told ABC News.

The other ships in the strike group are the cruiser USS Princeton and the destroyers USS William P. Lawrence, USS Stockdale and USS Shoup.

The official said the carrier strike group has not been assigned a mission, but was shifted in the event its resources are needed to “maximize available options.”

The USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and strike group is also in the northern Arabian Sea.

Russia

Russia, Syria’s longtime ally and primary arms supplier, has its only overseas naval base located in the Syrian port of Tartus, which has reportedly been used to support Russia’s growing number of naval patrols on the Mediterranean. However, Russia insists recent efforts to bolster its naval presence in the region are not in response to Western threats of a military strike.

Reported movements of many Russian ships in the region are coming from anonymous Russian defense ministry sources and have not been confirmed. RT contacted the Russian Navy to ask for confirmation of the reported ship movements, though no comment was forthcoming.

On Friday, for example, the large landing ship, Nikolai Filchenkov, was reportedly dispatched from the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol for the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, from where it is eventually expected to reach the Syrian coast, a source told Interfax News Agency.

“The ship will make call in Novorossiisk, where it will take on board special cargo and set off for the designated area of its combat duty in the eastern Mediterranean,” the source said.

RIA news agency quoted an unnamed senior naval source as saying on Friday that the frigate, Smetlivy, would leave for the Mediterranean on September 12-14, and the corvette Shtil and missile boat Ivanovets would approach Syria at the end of the month.

The Russian destroyer Nastoichivy, which is the flagship of the Baltic fleet, is also expected to join the group in the region.

Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov, who was unable to comment on specific reports, said on Thursday the Russian navy currently had a “pretty strong group” there.

“The Russian navy does not intend to take part directly or indirectly in a possible regional conflict,” he told the state Rossiya 24 broadcaster.

“Our navy vessels are a guarantee of stability, guarantee of peace, an attempt to hold back other forces ready to start military action in the region.”

Also reportedly in place in the eastern Mediterranean are the frigate Neustrashimy, as well as the landing ships Alexander Shabalin, the Admiral Nevelsky and the Peresvet.

They are expected to be joined by the guided-missile cruiser Moskva.

The Moskva, set to arrive in a little over a week’s time, will take over operations from a naval unit in the region.

“The plans of the naval unit under the command of Rear Admiral Valery Kulikov had to be changed a little. Instead of visiting a Cape Verde port, the cruiser Moskva is heading to the Strait of Gibraltar. In about ten days, it will enter the eastern Mediterranean, where it will replace the destroyer Admiral Panteleyev as the flagship of the operative junction of the Russian Navy,” a source told Interfax on Wednesday.

Panteleyev incidentally, only arrived in the east Mediterranean Sea on Wednesday after leaving the Far-Eastern port city of Vladivostok on March 19 to join the Russian standing naval force as its flagship.

The SSV-201 reconnaissance ship, Priazovye, is also reportedly on its way to join the group in the Eastern Mediterranean. Accompanied by the two landing ships, Minsk and Novocherkassk, the intelligence ship passed through the ‘Istanbul Strait’ on Thursday, which helps form the boundary between Europe and Asia.

France

On August 31, French military officials confirmed the frigate Chevalier Paul, which specializes in anti-missile capabilities, and the transport ship, Dixmude, were in the Mediterranean. French officials denied they are in the region to participate in military action against Syria, but were rather taking part in training and operation preparations.

Despite their presence in the region, France currently has no ship-based missiles, so any offensive action would come from the air in the form of long-range Scalp missiles, similar to those the nation used in Kosovo in 1999 and in Libya in 2011, Time reports.

Italy

Two Italian warships set sail for Lebanon on Wednesday in a bid to protect 1,100 Italian soldiers in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, Syria’s southeastern neighbor, Agence France Presse reported.

The Italian ANSA news agency reported that a frigate and a torpedo destroyer boat departed from Italy’s southeastern coast on Wednesday and would provide additional protection to the soldiers in the event the Syrian conflict further deteriorates.

UK

As of August 29, the Royal Navy’s Response Force Task Group was deployed in the Mediterranean as part of long-planned exercise Cougar 13. The force includes helicopter carrier HMS Illustrious, type-23 frigates HMS Westminster and HMS Montrose, amphibious warship HMS Bulwark and six Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships. The Trafalgar-class nuclear submarine HMS Tireless was also believed to be in the area at the time, after it was detected in Gibraltar.

On the same day that British media started touting Britain’s “arsenal of military might” which would be available in the event of intervention, British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a vote endorsing military action against Syria by 13 votes. In light of the shocking parliamentary defeat, Foreign Secretary William Hague said the UK would only be able to offer the US “diplomatic support.”

The UK’s Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne, confirmed that the UK would not seek a further vote on action in Syria.

********************************

Syrian rebels say they’ll pounce on Assad’s forces if U.S. attacks

Rebels with the Free Syrian Army sit in a damaged bus in Idlib province. If the U.S. launches a strike against the Syrian government, rebel commanders say, they will be ready to take advantage — particularly around Damascus, the capital, where they say insurgents are infiltrating in preparation to attack. (Aleppo Media Center / September 4, 2013)

By Raja Abdulrahim and Patrick J. McDonnell

September 5, 2013, 5:39 p.m.

CAIRO — Syrian rebel forces say they are planning a nationwide offensive in conjunction with anticipated U.S. strikes against the forces of President Bashar Assad, seeking to use U.S. military might to force a decisive shift in the country’s long civil war.

Rebel commanders disagree on the level of coordination they expect with the U.S. and its allies, and made it clear they hope the United States will do more than launch the limited strikes President Obama has proposed to deter Assad from using chemical weapons. The rebels have been disappointed by America’s reluctance to get involved more deeply in the conflict.

The issue is now before Congress. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed an amended resolution Wednesday approving military action to change the battlefield momentum in Syria away from the government. But many members of Congress, particularly in the House, have expressed deep skepticism about military involvement.

If the U.S. strikes, rebels said Thursday, they will be ready to take advantage — particularly around Damascus, the capital, where they say insurgents are infiltrating in preparation to attack.

"We are ready once the first rocket is launched," said Col. Qassim Saad Eddine, spokesman for the Supreme Military Council, which oversees the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army. "We will attack the military sites, not just in one province, but all over Syria."

Saad Eddine said Free Syrian Army chief of staff Gen. Salim Idriss and the rebel command have been told they would receive some notice of a U.S. attack, perhaps a few hours in advance, but have not coordinated targets with U.S. or allied military personnel.

"The targets are already known," he said, referring to Syrian military and command installations.

But one opposition commander, Col. Abduljabbar Akidi, who heads the Free Syrian Army contingent in northern Syria’s Aleppo province, said by Skype that coordination on potential targets is already underway in joint operation rooms in Turkey and Jordan with "supporting countries," including the United States.

"If they strike the regime with a crippling hit, we will finish them off," Akidi said.

The Obama administration has long expressed concern aboutAl Qaeda-linked militants being a major force in the rebel movement, and several members of Congress have cited that concern in expressing doubts about U.S. military involvement.

A key question is whether rebel coordination would involve only the Free Syrian Army or extend to other factions in the fragmented opposition. In practice, disparate rebel brigades often unify in battle.

Some insurgents distrustful of the West worry that U.S military planners might try to attack Al Qaeda-linked rebel factions under the cover of an assault on Assad’s forces.

Nonetheless, after having been outgunned for more than two years, the rebels are clearly relishing the prospect of having U.S. firepower on their side. Commanders say they want to be in position to pounce, especially in Damascus, seat of Assad’s power, which is expected to be the focus of any U.S. bombardment.

"We are going to be ready to take advantage of the areas after a strike," said Abu Jamal, nickname for a commander with the Farouq Brigade, one of the largest insurgent groups.

In preparation for a possible U.S. attack, said one rebel spokesman, insurgents outside Damascus were sending fighters into the capital with light weapons to prepare to seize government buildings. Some are said to be stockpiling weapons for an offensive.

"All sides are working together to take Damascus if the American strikes are truthful, and if they are targeted at the regime," said Abu Harith, nickname for a spokesman with the Ansar al Islam brigade in Damascus, one of the largest groups in the capital.

The rebels are not the only ones making preparations. Syrian officials have also had time to get ready.

The opposition has reported that the Syrian military has been moving missiles, aircraft and other assets from exposed bases to less vulnerable sites. Witnesses say they have seen Syrian soldiers crowding into schools and other facilities in Damascus.

To be effective, the opposition says, U.S. strikes must hit key targets such as the Mezzeh military air base in the capital or the army’s 155th Brigade compound near Damascus, reported site of Scud missile launches.

Abu Jamal of the Farouq Brigade said there were indications that the government was sending in tanks, other armored vehicles and artillery from embattled Homs province to bolster the defense of Damascus.

Rebels are hoping for a surge in arms supplies before any U.S. strike, but the evidence so far is mixed. In southern Syria, one commander has reported an increased number of arms, including antitank weapons, arriving via neighboring Jordan. But there has yet to be any uptick in materiel from Turkey, said a commander in the north.

It was not clear if there is any connection between the prospect of U.S. military action and the reported defection to Turkey this week of a former Syrian general and ex-defense minister, Ali Habib Mahmoud, a member of Assad’s Alawite sect no longer considered a key player in the government or its defense apparatus.

Unprecedented explosion of resistance in the wake of independent news.

Kit DanielsInfowars.com September 6, 2013

In yet another example of the emerging power of alternative media, Americans are openly rejecting Sen. Lindsey Graham’s “us vs. them” rhetoric that if the U.S. doesn’t attack Syria, terrorists could nuke South Carolina.

In an article by CBS Charlotte, Graham said that if the U.S. doesn’t proceed with military action against the Russian-backed Assad regime, Iran will not take “America’s resolve” to stop their nuclear weapons program seriously.

As a result, Graham said, terrorists could easily detonate a nuclear device in Charleston Harbor.

Many of the article’s commenters have openly called out Graham for “fear mongering” and linked his statements directly to our report, with some even suggesting that a false flag could be in the making:

These comments showcase the devastating effect that the alternative media, such as the Drudge Report,Natural News, and World Net Daily, is having on the government’s ability to control the news in order to influence the viewpoints of Americans.

No longer is the public lining up front and center behind the “official stories” promoted by politicians which trend away from the truth.

Instead, they are starting to think for themselves and, as Benjamin Franklin so eloquently put it centuries ago, “it is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”

Earlier this month, Politico reported that Barbara Bush, the daughter of former President George W. Bush, is “politically unaffiliated.”

Several of the article’s commenters didn’t buy it:

This unprecedented mass exposure of political spin and habitual lying isn’t just limited to on-line comments.

His son, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), has even stated that “we may well be allies with al-Qaeda if we go” into Syria.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) said that the U.S. military shouldn’t go to Syria to become “al-Qaeda’s air force.”

Warmongering Sen. John McCain (R-Az.), who was recently caught playing electronic poker during a Senate war hearing on Syria, was even confronted by angry Americans opposed to an attack on the country during a town hall meeting.

A call to Graham’s office revealed that his staff is currently overloaded with inquiries about the nuclear weapons transfer to South Carolina.

Politicians such as Graham will continue to face massive resistance to their rhetoric as alternative media continues to explode in popularity.

A local Prescott man called for John McCain to be arrested and tried for treason.

Amash: Boehner’s decision to back Obama was a mistake

By Rebecca Shabad – 09/06/13 02:21 PM ET

Speaker John Boehner’s decision to back President Obama on Syria was a mistake, according to Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.).

“If you’re Speaker of the House and you’re going to take a position in support of the war, which is contrary to what the vast majority of Americans believe, it might be nice to call up your GOP conference and say, ‘Hey, this is what we plan to do,’ but we didn’t get any of that,” said Amash, who is a frequent critic of GOP leadership.

“There’s constantly a vacuum in leadership, and whenever there’s a big issue where the majority of Americans are going one way, we see our leadership going with the president,” he said on the The Laura Ingraham radio show.

The Michigan congressman said he has spent much of the last two weeks meeting with constituents in his district about Syria. More than 95 percent of them are opposed to military action, he said.

Amash also took aim at other Republicans during the interview.

He criticized Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for saying “Allahu Akbar” is equivalent to a Christian saying “thank God,” calling the assertion “ignorant and offensive.”

As members of Congress reveal that calls to their offices are overwhelmingly against the war, and the House considers it may not vote at all, in order to spare Obama embarrassment, we can see a version of what refusing to vote for a president on election day looks like.

Credit: afagen via Flickr

It looks like: no-confidence.

Every four years, I write about this possibility. Suppose only 19% of eligible voters showed up at the polls. It would speak loudly: The American people no longer trust the major candidates. They no longer trust the charade. They no longer trust the vote-count. They know both major candidates work for the same Globalist machine.

No-confidence.

Well, here it is. On the issue of the war.

I’m not saying the Congress will reject war. They may go ahead and drive the steamroller over the people. But it’s getting a little hairy for them.

And remember this. The media play any significant presidential victory as a signal that all his programs and plans are getting a boost. But on the flip side, that means a significant failure, in full view of the country, will register—despite the hype and explanations—as a weakening of his overall standing.

Washington DC registers such shifts in power like starving dogs smelling bloody meat. They attack.

War is supposed to be such a big deal that it’s a foregone conclusion, if the President wants it. He either sends the planes on his own, or Congress rubber stamps his position first. But this time, it’s different.

This time it’s: do we believe the President and his “evidence” and his claim that he’s taking the moral high ground; or don’t we. The question is in plain sight. It’s out there for all to see.

The push to war is such an obvious fabrication, only a complete fool or a dyed-in-the-wool Obama believer would opt for attacking Syria. The hypnotic Obama bubble is bursting, even for many of the faith.

In my last article on Syria, I pointed out that the super-secret Congressional intell briefing was a sham. It was all generality and no hard evidence. It was basically arm twisting.

So what’s left? Nothing. “Do what the President wants you to do.”

If Congress says yes, they’ll go down deeper into the dumper with Obama. These barnacles on the body politic can do one thing: assess self-interest and electability. They’re thinking about it.

They’re in the pressure cooker.

Taking a step back…do you think Obama woke up one day and said, “Hold on here. Assad just used chemical weapons on his own people. I have to take action. I have to punish him.”

Of course not. This idea came from somewhere else. It’s been on the table for years, as part of a Middle East strategy to destabilize the whole region. It’s, on one level, a Mossad-CIA plan, with a Saudi twist. On a higher level, it’s a Globalist operation, whose end game is order from chaos.

Obama is just another renter in the White House, playing the cards he was dealt. He goes along with the show, introducing his own prejudices, like any other President, and takes what he can get.

He’s no magic man, and now his juice is running out.

A no-confidence vote against war on Syria could, however, expand to mean no-confidence in any White House occupant from the two major parties.

Waking up is hard to do, but if the American people keep their eyes open, they’ll see that this Syria escapade is just one more example of an agenda that betrays any sane person’s idea of what America is supposed to be.

The only kind of transcendent President, in these times, would be one who, after a year or so in office, would hold a press conference and say, “I’ve learned I’m being run. Men are controlling the office of President. I’m supposed to take their orders. Here is what I know about them. Here are their names. Here is what they told me. Here is how they’re trying to coerce me. This is the story, the real story about what has happened to this country…”

To which people might say, “How could a President do that? They’d kill him.”

Exactly. That’s why I used the word “transcendent.”

Every American President sends soldiers to their deaths, and he kills people in distant countries. To be “transcendent” is to put his own life on the line, too.

That should give you some idea about why no-votes signalling no confidence in Presidents are vital. None of them will go as far as necessary to blow the cover on who really runs this nation.

According to Egyptian newspaper and television reports, Malik Obama has become a target in an Egyptian government terrorist investigation because of his role as an owner and investment adviser for the Sudan-based Islamic Dawa Organization, or IDO, and the organization’s umbrella group, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dr. Ahmed Nabil Ganzory, in his capacity as lawyer and agent for Dr. Sadik Rauf Obeid, and resident in the United States of America, filed a complaint with Egyptian Attorney General Hisham Barakat, against Malik Obama, accusing him of supporting terrorism in Egypt and for his involvement in managing the Islamic Dawa Organization (IDO). The complaint also asks to include Chancellor Tahani Al-Jebali to substantiate claims against Obama. …

Complaint No. 1761 for the year 2013 reported to the Attorney General asked the Egyptian High Court to consider the suspicious activity of a group called the Islamic Dawa Organization, which is owned and managed by Malik Obama. This group is now being investigated by international bodies and the attached evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a close link exists between Malik Obama and some of the most notorious characters already wanted for their involvement in terrorism, as is consistent with the pictures and reports attached. …

The complaint also asks the court to bring in Malik Obama – a resident of the United States – to be questioned in regard to the terrorist groups in Egypt, whether by inciting or participating with or in any form of support punishable by law. It seeks permission to declare Obama a defendant in his right outside Egypt diplomatically, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the case of non-appearance and compliance for the investigation, the complainant requests monitoring [Malik Obama] by including his name on all Egyptian airports and ports, and take the necessary legal steps.”

WND has previously reported that Malik Obama is the executive secretary of the Dawa Organization, a group created by the government of Sudan, which is considered by the U.S. State Department to be a terrorist state.

Shoebat has further reported Malik Obama attended an IDO conference in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, that was attended and supervised by Sudan President Omar Al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on seven counts related to crimes against humanity.

An objectives of the IDO is to spread radical Wahhabist Islam across the African continent.

WND has reported Malik Obama was the best man at the wedding of Barack Obama to Michelle Robinson on Oct. 3, 1992. He has been photographed visiting President Obama in the White House.

Malik Obama, best man at the wedding of Barack H. Obama, Oct. 3, 1992

Tied to Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

The criminal complaint referenced in the translation by Shoebat also calls for the inclusion of Tahani al-Gebali, former chancellor and a current advisor to the Constitutional Court of Egypt.

WND reported Aug. 20 that Gebali went public in Cairo with allegations that Malik Obama had links to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Gebali charged that Malik Obama is “one of the architects” of the investments made by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

“The Obama administration cannot stop us,” Gebali said, as reported by Egyptian television. “We need to open the files and begin court sessions. The Obama administration knows that they supported terrorism. We will open the files and begin court sessions.”

Gebali further charged the Obama administration’s enthusiastic support of the Morsi government brought into power after the “Arab Spring” continued even after the Morsi government welcomed Muslim Brotherhood leaders into the government.

Gebali suggested the Obama administration’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was a main reason President Obama has opposed the current military government ruling Egypt since Morsi was deposed.

WND has reported Egyptian government prosecutors plan to introduce evidence Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Cairo received bribes paid in amounts as large as $850,000 a year each from the Obama administration in Washington via the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

In September 2011, WND reported the Barack H. Obama Foundation, owned and operated by Malik Obama, apparently received notice of IRS approval in a document signed by Lois Lerner, the former head of the IRS tax-exempt division now on paid executive leave from her supervisory duties after she took the Fifth Amendment before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on May 22. She was to be questioned regarding her department’s use of inappropriate criteria to delay or otherwise deny tax-exempt status for tea party and “patriot” groups.

Malik Obama received the determination letter from Lerner one month after an application was submitted in May 2011. The IRS determination letter June 11, 2011, granted highly irregular retroactive tax-exempt approval only after the group came under fire for operating as a 501(c)3 foundation since 2008 without ever having applied to the IRS.

In May, WND reported that funds contributed in the U.S. to a 501(c)3 foundation run by Malik Obama have been diverted to support Malik’s multiple wives in Kenya, according to Shoebat.

In October 2012, WND reported a separate foundation, the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation, created on behalf of Obama’s step-grandmother in Kenya, has transferred funds, 90 percent of which are raised from U.S. individuals and corporations, to send Kenyan students to the top three most radical Wahhabist madrassas in Saudi Arabia.

In the first parliamentary elections held in Egypt after former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood’s newly formed Freedom and Justice Party won nearly half the seats in the People’s Assembly.

NOW EGYPT LOOKS TO ‘EXPOSE’ OBAMA

Strategy may include embarrassing White House

The evidence is mounting that the military government currently ruling Egypt has decided to embarrass the Obama administration as part of a strategy to suppress Muslim Brotherhood activity in Egypt.

Last week, WND reported that Tehani al-Gebali, the vice president of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, gave a speech and participated in an interview broadcast on Egyptian television that identified Malik Obama, the Kenyan half-brother of President Obama, as “a major architect” managing investments for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

In the speech, Gebali said she would like “open files” to expose nations like the United States that are resisting the current military-controlled government of Egypt by continuing to support “terrorist” groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Armanious puzzled over why the Obama administration supported the Muslim Brotherhood when the result of the “Arab Spring” was to oust Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and elect Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi as president June 30, 2012.

“In an effort to make some sense of the Obama Administration’s policies, Amr Adeeb, a prominent Egyptian commentator, argues that the U.S. is helping the Muslim Brotherhood to achieve power, in order to turn Egypt into a magnet for jihadist fighters,” Armanious continued. “The goal, Adeeb states, is to turn Egypt into another Syria or Afghanistan and discredit Islamism as a viable political movement.”

Armanious argued the theory helped explain why the Obama administration has continued to side with the Muslim Brotherhood.

“To Westerners, this may seem like a bizarre conspiracy theory, but for Egyptians it helps explain why the U.S. government is supporting an organization that has openly declared jihad against the West, engaged in threats of war with Israel and Ethiopia, demolished dozens of ancient historic churches, set hospitals on fire, and murdered Christians in the streets. The Muslim Brotherhood has no respect for the rule of law, but the Obama Administration treats the Egyptian military that removed the group from power as a threat to democracy itself.”

Armanious charged that Morsi and his supporters utilized undemocratic measures to gain and hold onto power, citing as proof of his claim that on the day of Morsi’s election as president, the Muslim Brotherhood stopped thousands of Coptic Christians from voting.

Armanious wrote:

Morsi also straightforwardly stated that he was recreating an Islamic “Caliphate.” He pardoned and freed hard-line Islamists – including Anwar Sadat’s killers – and allowed them to have an Islamic political party, contrary to the constitution, which bans religious parties. When Morsi spoke to audiences, hard-line Islamists sat in the front row, demonstrating that these people were his political base.

To buttress the support of this base, Morsi released members of Gamaa al-Islamiyya, founded by the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, who attempted the first World Trade Center attack. This group, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, killed over 60 tourists in Luxor in 1997. That history did not stop Morsi from appointing one of its members governor of Luxor, over the objection of local residents who are dependent on tourism for their livelihood. Nor did it stop him from assigning another member of this group as Minister of Culture. With these decisions, Morsi delivered a final blow to Egypt’s tourism industry.

Concluding his article, Armonious noted many Egyptians are asking: “Why is the U.S. Administration siding with the forces of oppression in their country and assisting with its transformation into a failed state under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood?”

Egypt cracks down on Muslim Brotherhood

Last week in Cairo, the government arrested Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Ahmad Aref along with some 75 executive members of the group, according to Egypt’s interior ministry.

Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the steps come within the framework of the security services’ efforts to pursue the Brotherhood’s executive leaders and organizational offices, as well members who had arrest warrants issued against them.

The English-language Daily News in Cairo independently reported last week that security forces in Egypt arrested a number of senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood in a campaign of arrests that followed the dispersal of sit-ins at Rabaa Al-Adaweya and Nehda Square.

The Daily Times further reported Muslim Brotherhood lawyer Ali Kamal accused supporters of the change of power that unseated Morsi as seeking to “settle accounts” by arresting the supreme guide of the group, Mohamed Badie, and other senior members.

“It is well-known that all the charges brought against the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and … the Freedom and Justice Party … are implausible fabricated charges with no legally acceptable evidence,” he said on the group’s website.

Prominent supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood Safwat Hegazy was arrested early Wednesday morning near Marsa Matrouh. The Ministry of Interior said it apprehended Hegazy, who had changed his appearance, as he attempted to cross into Libya through Egypt’s western border.

According to the Daily Times report, Safwat Hegazy was accused of inciting violence and killing.

The campaign the Egyptian government is waging against the Muslim Brotherhood appears to be effective.

Reuters reported that mass protests called by the Muslim Brotherhood for last Friday failed to materialize as the movement “reeled from a bloody army crackdown on followers of ousted President Mohamed Morsi.

Troops and police had taken what Reuters called “low-key security measures” before the “Friends of Martyrs” processions that the Muslim Brotherhood had planned to launch from 28 mosques in the capital after weekly prayers.

But midday prayers were canceled last Friday at some Cairo mosques. and there were few signs of major demonstrations unfolding in the city.

President Obama’s request for express congressional authorization for a limited aerial invasion of Syria raises profound legal and constitutional questions. For starters, there is simply no legal basis in international law to support an American invasion of Syria. Yet, notwithstanding that, federal law permits the president to commit U.S. military forces anywhere he wants for up to 90 days, without express authorization from Congress. So, why did Obama ask for the authorization he surely knows he already has?

Since March 2011, Syria has been in the throes of a civil war. Those seeking to oust the government of President Bashar al-Assad are a mixture of his domestic political opponents, disgruntled former Syrian military officers and dangerous radical foreign Islamist fighters affiliated with al-Qaida. International organizations monitoring the war have put the dead from both sides at more than 100,000 persons.

Until last week, the U.S. had steadfastly stayed out of this war, as its outcome is unlikely to affect American national security. Though Assad is a former friend who once famously dined with then Sen. John Kerry, he is now a monster willing to go to extremes to stay in power. On the other hand, our allies in the region surely would prefer that the Syrian government not be run by or under the influence of al-Qaida, and federal law prohibits Americans and the U.S. government from aiding al-Qaida. Hence, our neutrality — until Obama made a thoughtless and bravado-driven comment during his re-election campaign in August 2012, and now fears that his bluff has been called.

In his comment, the president, sounding like an international policeman — a position he condemned when President George W. Bush sounded that way — declared that if the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its adversaries, the very use of which is prohibited by all civilized norms, America would revisit its neutrality. In reliance upon what he now claims is sound intelligence showing government use of chemical weapons on innocent Syrian civilians, Obama last week stated an intention to engage in a limited military invasion of Syria so as to weaken its resolve and ability to fight the rebels further.

Never mind that the photos shown by Obama’s folks of aid workers ministering to the supposed victims of government gassing show the workers without gas masks or gloves, and never mind that the Assad regime has permitted U.N. weapons inspectors unfettered access to its materiel, and never mind that the president wants to invade Syria before the weapons inspectors issue their report. The president wants us to believe that the Assad regime intentionally gassed a thousand Syrian innocents who were of no military value to the rebels or threat to the regime — and among whom were, according to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “hundreds of children.”

Even if all this took place as Obama claims, can he lawfully bomb Syria to punish its government for violating international norms or to deter it from doing so again? In a word: No.

International law recognizes only three lawful routes to the use of military force. It recognizes the right of every country to launch military force in order to prevent its own borders from being invaded or to subdue those who commenced an invasion. It also recognizes the ability of any U.N. member state to come to the aid of any other U.N. member state when one of them has been invaded. And treaties to which the U.S. and Syria are parties permit limited purpose invasions when approved by the U.N. None of these lawful scenarios applies to Syria.

Can Obama just launch an invasion of Syria even if it would be unlawful and even if Congress says no?

Because of the vicissitudes of history, the personalities of presidents and the myopic compromises of past Congresses, the area of presidential war-making has different legal and constitutional ramifications. Under the Constitution, only Congress can authorize the offensive use of military force. James Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention in 1787 make it obvious that the Framers were nearly unanimous in their resolve to keep the war-making power away from the president and repose it exclusively with Congress. They did this clearly and unambiguously in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Notwithstanding the precise language of the Constitution and the history of the nation’s birth, the War Powers Resolution (WPR), a federal statute enacted in 1973 over President Nixon’s veto, does permit the president on his own to use the military for offensive wars for a maximum of 90 days. Thus, under current federal law, Obama may lawfully bomb Syria even if Congress declines to authorize him to do so and even though such an act would violate international law.

But the WPR is profoundly unconstitutional because it cedes Congress’ constitutional war-making power to the president. The WPR was an ill-conceived political compromise effectuated by a Watergate-weakened president, congressional hawks who approved of Nixon’s unilateral invasion of Cambodia and sober congressional heads more faithful to the separation of powers.

Yet, the Supreme Court has ruled consistently that the transfer of constitutional powers among the branches of the federal government is unconstitutional, even if popular and consensual, unless brought about by an amendment to the Constitution. Thus, Congress can no more let the president start wars than the president can let Congress appoint federal judges, lest the Constitution have no meaning or force of law.

So why does Obama want Congress’ approval to do that which international law prohibits and federal law permits? Obama knows that war is the health of the state: It unites political adversaries around common patriotic-sounding goals and often generates support for those in harm’s way and resources for the government officials who sent them there.

But, will another war enhance our freedoms or our safety? Will it add to our debt? Will it trash the law? Can we bomb and kill for bragging rights?

A video has emerged of an opposition rebel militant in Syria apparently confessing to using chemical weapons in order to follow Osama Bin Laden’s mantra of killing women and children.

The individual in the clip, Nadeem Baloosh, is a member an insurgent group called Riyadh Al Abdeen, which is active in the Latakia area of Syria.

Baloosh speaks of “chemicals which produce lethal and deadly gases that I possess,” before going on to state, “We decided to harm them through their women and kids.”

Baloosh ponders if it is acceptable to harm women and children before quoting the Koran, “Fight them as they fight you. ” He goes on to quote Osama Bin Laden (whom other rebel groups have openly praised).

“We’ll kill their women and children like Sheikh Osama Bin Laden said – “until they cease killing our women and kids,” he states.

Baloosh goes on to talk about the Syrian Army approaching the area where his rebel group were located, before stating, “So we had the idea that this weapon was very powerful and effective to repel them, we announced if they approached one meter, everything is permitted.”

“We will strike them in their homes, we will turn their day into night and their night into day,” adds Baloosh.

The footage adds to the increasing weight of evidence that suggests US-backed rebels possess and have used chemical weapons on more than one occasion, although such reports have been habitually downplayed by the mainstream media.

Earlier today Russia announced that it had compiled a 100 page report proving opposition rebels “were behind a deadly sarin gas attack in an Aleppo suburb earlier this year.”

Carla Del Ponte, the leading member of the UN inquiry into the attack, which happened in March, told Swiss TV that there existed “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” that rebels were responsible for the atrocity.

As we highlighted last week, Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta admitted to a reporter that they were responsible for last month’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.

Despite the fact that the report was written by credible Associated Press and BBC correspondent Dale Gavlak, it has received virtually zero mainstream attention.

In addition, leaked phone conversations that emerged earlier this year between two members of the FreeSyrian Army contain details of a plan to carry out a chemical weapons attack capable of impacting an area the size of one kilometer. Footage was also leaked showing opposition militants testing what appeared to be nerve agents on laboratory rabbits.

There are also multiple other videos which apparently show US-backed rebels preparing and using chemical weapons.

Who Benefits From A War Between The United States And Syria?

Someone wants to get the United States into a war with Syria very, very badly. Cui bono is an old Latin phrase that is still commonly used, and it roughly means "to whose benefit?" The key to figuring out who is really behind the push for war is to look at who will benefit from that war. If a full-blown war erupts between the United States and Syria, it will not be good for the United States, it will not be good for Israel, it will not be good for Syria, it will not be good for Iran and it will not be good for Hezbollah. The party that stands to benefit the most is Saudi Arabia, and they won’t even be doing any of the fighting.

They have been pouring billions of dollars into the conflict in Syria, but so far they have not been successful in their attempts to overthrow the Assad regime. Now the Saudis are trying to play their trump card – the U.S. military. If the Saudis are successful, they will get to pit the two greatest long-term strategic enemies of Sunni Islam against each other – the U.S. and Israel on one side and Shia Islam on the other. In such a scenario, the more damage that both sides do to each other the happier the Sunnis will be.

There would be other winners from a U.S. war with Syria as well. For example, it is well-known that Qatar wants to run a natural gas pipeline out of the Persian Gulf, through Syria and into Europe. That is why Qatar has also been pouring billions of dollars into the civil war in Syria.

So if it is really Saudi Arabia and Qatar that want to overthrow the Assad regime, why does the United States have to do the fighting?

Someone should ask Barack Obama why it is necessary for the U.S. military to do the dirty work of his Sunni Muslim friends.

Obama is promising that the upcoming attack will only be a "limited military strike" and that we will not be getting into a full-blown war with Syria.

The only way that will work is if Syria, Hezbollah and Iran all sit on their hands and do nothing to respond to the upcoming U.S. attack.

Could that happen?

Maybe.

Let’s hope so.

But if there is a response, and a U.S. naval vessel gets hit, or American blood is spilled, or rockets start raining down on Tel Aviv, the U.S. will then be engaged in a full-blown war.

That is about the last thing that we need right now.

The vast majority of Americans do not want to get embroiled in another war in the Middle East, and even a lot of top military officials are expressing "serious reservations" about attacking Syria according to the Washington Post…

The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.

Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.

For the United States, there really is no good outcome in Syria.

If we attack and Assad stays in power, that is a bad outcome for the United States.

If we help overthrow the Assad regime, the rebels take control. But they would be even worse than Assad. They have pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda, and they are rabidly anti-American, rabidly anti-Israel and rabidly anti-western.

So why in the world should the United States get involved?

This war would not be good for Israel either. I have seen a number of supposedly pro-Israel websites out there getting very excited about the prospect of war with Syria, but that is a hugemistake.

Syria has already threatened to attack Israeli cities if the U.S. attacks Syria. If Syrian missiles start landing in the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel will respond.

And if any of those missiles have unconventional warheads, Israel will respond by absolutely destroying Damascus.

And of course a missile exchange between Syria and Israel will almost certainly draw Hezbollah into the conflict. And right now Hezbollah has 70,000 rockets aimed at Israel.

If Hezbollah starts launching those rockets, thousands upon thousands of innocent Jewish citizens will be killed.

So all of those "pro-Israel" websites out there that are getting excited about war with Syria should think twice. If you really are "pro-Israel", you should not want this war. It would not be good for Israel.

If you want to stand with Israel, then stand for peace. This war would not achieve any positive outcomes for Israel. Even if Assad is overthrown, the rebel government that would replace him would be even more anti-Israel than Assad was.

War is hell. Ask anyone that has been in the middle of one. Why would anyone want to see American blood spilled, Israeli blood spilled or Syrian blood spilled?

If the Saudis want this war so badly, they should go and fight it. Everyone knows that the Saudis have been bankrolling the rebels. At this point, even CNN is openly admitting this…

It is an open secret that Saudi Arabia is using Jordan to smuggle weapons into Syria for the rebels. Jordan says it is doing all it can to prevent that and does not want to inflame the situation in Syria.

Of course it is well known that countries, such as Saudi Arabia, who hold the purse strings can shape and manipulate them to suit their own interests.

Ideologically, these countries mobilize them through direct or indirect means as extremist tools. If they declare that Muslims must pursue Jihad in Syria, thousands of fighters will respond.

Financially, those who finance and arm such groups can instruct them to carry out acts of terrorism and spread anarchy. The influence over them is synergized when a country such as Saudi Arabia directs them through both the Wahhabi ideology and their financial means.

And shortly after the British Parliament voted against military intervention in Syria, Saudi Arabia raised their level of "defense readiness" from "five" to "two" in a clear sign that they fully expect a war to happen…

Saudi Arabia, a supporter of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, has raised its level of military alertness in anticipation of a possible Western strike in Syria, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The United States has been calling for punitive action against Assad’s government for a suspected poison gas attack on a Damascus suburb on August 21 that killed hundreds of people.

Saudi Arabia’s defense readiness has been raised to "two" from "five", a Saudi military source who declined to be named told Reuters. "One" is the highest level of alert.

And guess who has been supplying the rebels in Syria with chemical weapons?

According to Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak, it has been the Saudis…

Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta have admitted to Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak that they were responsible for last week’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.

And this is someone that isn’t just fresh out of journalism school. As Paul Joseph Watson noted, "Dale Gavlak’s credibility is very impressive. He has been a Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press for two decades and has also worked for National Public Radio (NPR) and written articles for BBC News."

The Voice of Russia has also been reporting on Gavlak’s bombshell findings…

The rebels noted it was a result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

As Gavlak reports, Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels died in a weapons storage tunnel. The father stated the weapons were provided to rebel forces by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, describing them as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”

“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K’. “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.

Gavlak also refers to an article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks stating that Prince Bandar threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with terror attacks at next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if Russia doesn’t agree to change its stance on Syria.

“Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” the article stated.

“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Saudi Prince allegedly told Vladimir Putin.

Yes, the Saudis were so desperate to get the Russians to stand down and allow an attack on Syria that they actually threatened them. Zero Hedge published some additional details on the meeting between Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Russian President Vladimir Putin…

Bandar told Putin, “There are many common values and goals that bring us together, most notably the fight against terrorism and extremism all over the world. Russia, the US, the EU and the Saudis agree on promoting and consolidating international peace and security. The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya. … As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria’s political future.”

It is good of the Saudis to admit they control a terrorist organization that "threatens the security" of the Sochi 2014 Olympic games, and that house of Saud uses "in the face of the Syrian regime." Perhaps the next time there is a bombing in Boston by some Chechen-related terrorists, someone can inquire Saudi Arabia what, if anything, they knew about that.

But the piece de resistance is what happened at the end of the dialogue between the two leaders. It was, in not so many words, a threat by Saudi Arabia aimed squarely at Russia:

As soon as Putin finished his speech, Prince Bandar warned that in light of the course of the talks, things were likely to intensify, especially in the Syrian arena, although he appreciated the Russians’ understanding of Saudi Arabia’s position on Egypt and their readiness to support the Egyptian army despite their fears for Egypt’s future.

The head of the Saudi intelligence services said that the dispute over the approach to the Syrian issue leads to the conclusion that “there is no escape from the military option, because it is the only currently available choice given that the political settlement ended in stalemate. We believe that the Geneva II Conference will be very difficult in light of this raging situation.”

At the end of the meeting, the Russian and Saudi sides agreed to continue talks, provided that the current meeting remained under wraps. This was before one of the two sides leaked it via the Russian press.

Are you starting to get the picture?

The Saudis are absolutely determined to make this war happen, and they expect us to do the fighting.

And Barack Obama plans to go ahead and attack Syria without the support of the American people or the approval of Congress.

According to a new NBC News poll that was just released, nearly 80 percent of all Americans want Congress to approve a strike on Syria before it happens.

And according to Politico, more than 150 members of Congress have already signed letters demanding that Obama get approval from them before attacking Syria…

Already Thursday, more than 150 members of Congress have signaled their opposition to airstrikes on Syria without a congressional vote. House members circulated two separate letters circulated that were sent to the White House demanding a congressional role before military action takes place. One, authored by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.), has more than 150 signatures from Democrats and Republicans. Another, started by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), is signed by 53 Democrats, though many of them also signed Rigell’s letter.

However, is is clear that he is absolutely determined to attack Syria, and he is not going to let the U.S. Congress – even if they vote against it – or the American people stop him.

Canada’s government rallies behind Washington’s war on Syria

By Keith Jones 5 September 2013

Canada’s Conservative government has repeatedly voiced support for a US-led war on Syria. It has endorsed Washington’s lies about having incontrovertible proof that the Assad regime mounted a chemical weapons attack last month and it has pledged Canada’s support for the US waging war on Syria in defiance of international law.

Speaking to reporters August 28, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said “consequences” for the Syrian regime should not be blocked or impeded by the lack of United Nations’ Security Council authorization. Canada was “of one mind” with the US, Britain, and France and “will,” Baird vowed, “continue towork with them in lock-step.”

The next day, Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared himself a “reluctant convert” to “Western military action regarding the Syrian situation.” As Harper went on to explain, his reluctance was not due to any qualms about the US unilaterally attacking countries and carrying out “regime change.” Rather it arose from concerns about the potential danger to imperialist interests if the Syrian state were to fracture along ethnic-religious lines. “We have been, and remain, concerned,” said Harper, that “this conflict … is overwhelmingly sectarian in nature and does not have at present any ideal or obvious outcomes.”

That said, Harper emphasized his support for the US raining missiles and bombs on a poor, former colonial country. “We do support,” declared Canada’s prime minister, “our allies who are contemplating forceful action.”

Under conditions where there is massive popular opposition within the US and around the world to the impending US attack on Syria, Canada’s support for Washington’s war drive takes on added importance.

Last Friday, the day after the British parliament rejected a Conservative-Liberal coalition government motion authorizing Britain to join the US in attacking Syria, Baird rushed to second US Secretary of State John Kerry’s concocted “case” against Syria. Endorsing Washington’s attempts to bamboozle the public and run roughshod over the UN inspection process—in a reprise of the campaign of lies mounted by the administration of George W. Bush prior to the US’s illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq—Baird said, “The Obama administration has shown great resolve and proper due diligence in the past week, and we fully support its efforts going forward.”

In their remarks of last week, Harper and Baird indicated that the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) will not participate in the campaign of devastating air strikes the Obama administration has publicly vowed to inflict on Syria. In announcing his government’s support for US military action, Harper said, “at the present time, we have no plans of our own to have a Canadian military mission.” Baird, in a television interview the previous day, had implied Canada would, in any event, have little to contribute to the US attack, since it would likely begin with “cruise missiles or armed drones, neither of which Canada has.”

What Harper and Baird would not, nor could not, admit is that there is widespread public opposition to Canada participating in another imperialist war.

No one should presume, however, that this opposition and Harper’s statement mean that Canada’s role in the US war on Syria will be limited to political-diplomatic support.

Obama, Kerry and other US government spokesman have spoken of a “limited” campaign of air strikes. But they have also pledged to significantly “downgrade” Syria’s military capabilities and “upgrade” those of the Islamacist-dominated anti-Assad “rebels.” The US Congressional motion drafted at the White House’s behest would authorize military action for up to ninety days.

In other words, Washington is pursuing its oft-stated goal of toppling the Assad regime, but now through direct US military intervention. This escalation threatens to unleash a wider regional war, including potentially involving Iran—Syria’s principal ally and the target of a relentless US-led destabilization campaign, including punishing economic sanctions—and even Russia.

As the war on Syria expands, Washington can be expected to press Canada to deploy CAF ships and planes to the war theater and large sections of the Canadian ruling class will demand such a deployment so as to uphold the partnership with US imperialism through which it has asserted its own predatory interests on the world stage for the past seven decades.

The Harper government—which boasts about the depth of its support for Israel—has, it must be noted, repeatedly signaled that Canada would participate in any attack on Iran.

Moreover, the CAF has long been involved in planning for possible military intervention against Syria. Peter MacKay, who was Canada’s Defence Minister until a cabinet shuffle this past July, repeatedly let it be known that the CAF, in conjunction with Canada’s allies, was drafting plans to intervene in Syria.

Last week, General Tom Lawson, Canada’s Chief of the Defence Staff, was in Amman, Jordan for a three-day meeting with the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, as well as generals from eight other countries: the US’s most important NATO allies—Britain, France, Germany and Italy—and four counties that have been supporting and arming the US-backed Syrian rebels—Turkey (also a NATO member), Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan.

Canada’s Department of Defence has claimed that the meeting was long-scheduled and had nothing to do with the US preparations for imminent military action against Syria. Dempsey’s participation in the meeting alone makes this claim implausible, to say the least.

As part of its preparations for possible direct military intervention in Syria, Canada has also developed extensive military ties with Jordan, long one of the US’s most dependable client states in the Middle East, including signing a “defence co-operation memorandum” in the spring of 2012.

Canada’s Liberal Party, until recently the Canadian elite’s preferred party of government, is strongly supporting the US plans to attack Syria. Speaking last week, Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Marc Garneau said the Conservative government was right to pledge support for US military action against Syria even if taken without UN sanction.

Earlier, former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, former Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, and former Cabinet Minister and UN Ambassador Allan Rock had all asserted the right of Western countries to invade states and overthrow governments in the name of averting humanitarian disasters. All three boasted about the role Canada has played in developing a new political cover for imperialist intervention by promoting the so-called “responsibility to protect”—the ruse used by the US, France, Britain, and Canada to provide a rationale for the 2011 NATO attack on Libya, an attack that continued until Gaddafi was overthrown .

The Official Opposition New Democratic Party has, for its part, lent its full support to the US-orchestrated campaign to justify an attack on Syria in the name of policing the ban on the use of chemical weapons. Its only proviso has been that the UN inspectors should be allowed to file their report before any attack is launched. Canada’s social-democrats have repeatedly facilitated Canada’s participation in imperialist wars, including supporting NATO’s 1999 war on Yugoslavia, the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and the 2011 NATO war on Libya.

The awake people of Canada are Just as appalled as the rest of the world people at AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION LIES and DECEPTIONS once again Now its of Chemical weapons being used by Al Assad’s government against the Free Syrian Rebels (the real guilty party) as a reason to Obliterate the Country With Bombs as was done in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.etc.etc..We all Remember the WMDs lie for Iraq’s Obliteration with bombs and then Bush latter making a comedy Skit joke out of the fact that there were no WMDs to start of with ha ha ha

What can you do? » Send an e-mail to your MP. Just cut and paste the “dont attack SYRIA” pic statement above and send to your Member of Parliament A full list of MP’s e-mail addresses ishere. » Sign the online petitionhere.

Protests across Canada against war in Syria

REBEL YOUTH FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2013

Call for actionMany CPA member groups, as well as coalitions in other countries including the US, have devised emergency response plans in the event of an attack on Syria. These plans are often for a demonstration the day of, or one day following, such an attack. The CPA calls upon peace and social justice groups to devise such plans, whether or not an attack immediately involves Canada, and to continue to pressure the Government of Canada and NATO to keep their hands off Syria. Please email details about local emergency actions to cpa@web.ca. All actions will be posted on http://www.acp-cpa.ca.

Events Listings» CalgarySaturday August 31st 12pm at 615 Macleod Trail SE (outside the U.S consolate building),Calgary Facebook link» EdmontonEdmonton: No to War on Syria! No to Western Military Intervention! Information Picket Saturday August 31, 4:00 p.m. Meet at 103 Street and Whyte (82) Avenue, NE Corner » HamiltonPicket the Federal Building, 55 Bay Street North on Monday (Labour Day), September 2, from 10:30 am until noon and leaflet the annual Labour Day parade as it passes by. For more information see: Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War» MontrealSaturday, Aug. 31 from 12:00 to 2:00 pm, at Place du Canada, Montreal, QC. Facebook link» Niagara FallsNO Military intervention in SYRIA! Rally at Minister of Defence Office (Niagara Falls) Friday – 2:00pm until 4:00pm Rob Nicholson’s Office, 2895 St. Paul Avenue, Niagara Falls Facebook linkJoin the LIVE FREE COLLECTIVE and Niagara Coalition for Peace on Friday, August 30th from 2pm-4pm for a rally at Canadian Minister of Defence Rob Nicholson’s office to show your opposition to US military intervention in Syria on false humanitarian grounds. » OttawaRALLY AGAINST WAR ON SYRIA Saturday, August 31, 5 PM Human Rights Monument (Elgin at Lisgar) March to the U.S. Embassy Oppose the imminent US-led attack on Syria! We must state in the strongest terms: HANDS OFF SYRIA! Please join us with your banners and signs. Organized by Syria Solidarity, Nowar-Paix, and the Ottawa Peace Assembly For more information: nowar.paix at gmail.com » ReginaSaturday, August 31, 2013 2:00am in CST regina city hall to plaza and park Facebook link a rally to say no to the US and other countries who want to occupy and begin bombing the country and citizens of Syria. » TorontoDon’t attack Syria. Say no to war. Saturday, August 31 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm United States Consulate 360 University Avenue Facebook linkOrganized by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War Endorsed by the Canadian Arab Federation and Palestine House » VancouverEmergency rally against an US-led attack on Syria Saturday, August 31 2pm, Vancouver Art Gallery (Robson & Hornby) Organized by StopWar. Contact: stopwar@resist.ca Facebook linkStopWar Vancouver has endorsed this call by the Canadian Peace Alliance for emergency actions. Protests will be taking place in cities and towns across Canada in the coming days. » VictoriaThe Victoria Peace Coalition is organizing a rally at the Cenotaph at the Legislative Buildings in conjunction with CAIA who already had a silent vigil planned for that date and time — Saturday August 31. 12 noon. » WindsorWindsor Says: Hands Off Syria! Anti-War Picket Saturday August 31 11 am Corner of Ottawa St. and Walker Road, close to Market Square Bring signs and flags. This will be a speak out and a chance for us to involve our community in opposing wars of aggression. We will also flyer people going into the Windsor Market to spread the word. Labour Day Parade Monday September 2 Meet at 9:15 am behind the Windsor Peace Coalition Banner CAW 200/444 Hall, 1855 Turner Road, Windsor Parade leaves 10 am – heading to Fogolar Furlan Join the Anti-War Contingent in the Parade Bring signs and flags Windsor Peace Coalition windsorpeace@hotmail.com

Syria: Hundreds in Toronto protest impending U.S-led war

Many protesters at U.S. consulate express support for Syrian president Bashar Assad.

RENE JOHNSTON / TORONTO STAR

A young girl wears a T-shirt with a picture of Bashar Assad and the words " We Love You" below at a protest against U.S. involvement in Syria. They rallied Saturday at the U.S. consulate on University Ave.

Reem Sinno and her family were appalled by President Barack Obama’s announcement Saturday that he intended — pending congressional approval — to launch a military attack against the Syrian regime.

So the Syrian-Canadians joined more than 200 people at the U.S. consulate in Toronto to loudly protest the impending attack.

“I’m against the USA interfering in our issues,” said Sinno, holding a Syrian flag. “No one in the whole world likes it when others interfere in your life. They are calling the Assad regime a dictatorship. But Obama is more of a dictator than him.”

Protesters across the globe took to the streets to condemn Obama’s statement urging the U.S. to take action against Syrian president Bashar Assad’s regime. Obama said he wanted to hold the regime accountable for allegedly launching a chemical attack that killed more than 1,400 people on Aug. 21.

Many of the protesters in Toronto expressed support for Assad, some even wearing T-shirts displaying the dictator’s face and the words “We Love You” below. Chants of “Syria is not the enemy, war is not the answer” and “hands off Syria” were belted out on megaphones.

“We’ve seen in recent days that it’s been a lot more difficult for Obama to mobilize the international community and public opinion to support this war,” said James Clark, an organizer with Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, which arranged the protest. “It’s because Americans and the international public are tired of these wars that have all been based on lies. The memories of the Iraq war are still fresh in their minds.”

Clark said military action could exacerbate Syria’s civil war and result in even more causalities.

“We don’t think the so-called humanitarian interventions are humanitarian at all,” he said. “Up to 100,000 people have been killed and many more have been displaced in the civil war. Militarizing that conflict or bombing innocent civilians is not going to improve the situation.”

Many protesters called for an end to foreign interference in Syria, arguing the country should be allowed to determine its own destiny on its own terms.

But some in the crowd believed Assad’s regime must be overthrown.

“You can’t have a solution without Assad being thrown out,” said Naeim Asgary, 24. “He might not have used chemical weapons, but he’s killed at least 10,000 to 20,000 innocent people. I’m from Iran; I know what the Syrian army is up to.”

Nevertheless, the Sinno family and many others were resolute in their support for Assad.

“Syria’s president is the only president in the Arab world that has not been loyal to USA or Israel,” said 12-year-old Ali Mohammed, Reem’s son. “I was born in Palestine. I have to support Syria’s president for supporting us.”

There is still time to stop a war on Syria September 3, 2013 The ‘coalition of the willing’ was dealt a series of setbacks last week. In the UK, the government of David Cameron was rebuffed by the massive response from the Stop the War Coalition and by the British parliament, which voted against giving authorization for war. In the US, President Barack Obama has been trying to build a case for war, but is now waiting for congressional approval – a situation that temporarily stays his hand. Obama’s hesitation is a sign of real political weakness, and opens the door for the anti-war movement to keep up the pressure. But time is running out. The US Congress will meet next Monday to decide a course of action. There is a possibility that we can stop this war, but only with a huge global response. Already, there are calls for demonstrations around the world on Saturday, September 7. Following a solid anti-war response in Canada last weekend – which saw more than a dozen protests across the country – the Canadian Peace Alliance is calling on members and supporters to continue the momentum by organizing more demonstrations next weekend: on September 7, 8 and 9. Although Canada has said that it doesn’t intend to send military support for an attack, it has provided the US government with useful political support. We must pressure the Canadian government to reverse that support, while we ramp-up our opposition to the US war drive. The people of Syria have already suffered two years of a bloody civil war, with tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced or made refugees. A Western military attack would only make this situation worse. Just as we saw in the lead-up to the war on Iraq, John Kerry and other war proponents are willfully misrepresenting intelligence regarding chemical weapons in their rush to war. We need to show our solidarity with the people of Syria and stop the US from undertaking unilateral military action under the guise of humanitarian intervention. The lives of tens of thousands more Syrians are at stake.

Don’t attack Syria August 27, 2013 The Canadian Peace Alliance (CPA) is calling on all its members and supporters to oppose an impending US-led attack on Syria. Once again, a report about the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction is being used to justify an intervention. We are always opposed to the use of any weapons on civilians, but as was the case with the last reports of an alleged attack, there is no conclusive proof that the attack came from the Syrian government. Undaunted by the lack of evidence, US Secretary of State John Kerry has nevertheless declared that the US and its NATO allies will strike Syria. Any intervention by an new "coalition of the willing" will be against international law and must be opposed. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has said that Canada will be in "lock-step" with its NATO allies. Canadian officials are currently meeting with counterparts from France, the UK and the US to devise strategies for an intervention. Regardless of what one thinks of either the Syrian government or of the opposition forces, we know from recent experience that: – NATO and its allies have and will continue to lie about the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify "humanitarian" intervention. – NATO-led attacks, justified as a "responsibility to protect" (R2P) civilians, have resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths. The death toll from military attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya can be counted in the hundreds of thousands. – The geopolitical calculations of the NATO powers, and not the interests of ordinary people, are always the main considerations for any intervention. During the Vietnam War, US officials described a situation where it became necessary to "destroy the village in order to save it." As with all the recent evocations of R2P, it appears that the goal of NATO is to bomb civilians in order to save them. We must, therefore, stand in opposition to the actions of the aggressor states in NATO and call on the government of Canada to keep its hands off Syria. Call for actionMany CPA member groups, as well as coalitions in other countries including the US, have devised emergency response plans in the event of an attack on Syria. These plans are often for a demonstration the day of, or one day following, such an attack. The CPA calls upon peace and social justice groups to devise such plans, whether or not an attack immediately involves Canada, and to continue to pressure the Government of Canada and NATO to keep their hands off Syria. Please email details about local emergency actions to cpa@web.ca. All actions will be posted on http://www.acp-cpa.ca.

Ted Cruz: U.S. not ‘Al Qaeda’s air force’

Sen. Ted Cruz called President Barack Obama’s efforts to authorize military intervention in Syria a public relations move, saying the U.S. military shouldn’t be “Al Qaeda’s air force.”

The Texas Republican said Tuesday on TheBlaze that while he’s glad the president listened to calls from him and others to bring the issue to Congress, America shouldn’t get involved and risk helping terrorists in the rebel forces.

“We certainly don’t have a dog in the fight,” Cruz said, calling it a civil war in Syria. “We should be focused on defending the United States of America. That’s why young men and women sign up to join the military, not to, as you know, serve as Al Qaeda’s air force.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters that Cruz sounded “totally uninformed” in his comments and that there is “overwhelming” evidence that the Free Syrian Army is still the dominant opposition force on the battlefield, not terrorists. McCain met with the army’s leader, Gen. Salim Idriss, in June.

“This is based on this assumption that they’re all extremists,” McCain said. “That’s just false, totally false. That’s someone that’s totally uninformed.”

Instead of being focused on securing chemical weapons in Syria, Cruz said, the president is too focused on “international norms” and his own public image.

(Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin saidRussia did not rule out approving a military operation in Syria if clear evidence showed Damascus had carried out chemical weapons attacks, but said any attack would be illegal without U.N. support.

In an interview with AP and Russia’s First Channel, released the day before a G20 leaders’ meeting in St Petersburg, Putin said he expected to hold talks with the U.S. President Barack Obama on the summit sidelines, saying there was much to discuss.

Ties between the United States and Russia have fallen to one of their lowest points since the end of the Cold War over numerous issues including violence in Syria, where Russia has been President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful protector.

Putin’s comments appeared intended to show readiness to remain constructive in U.S.-Russia ties, despite Obama’s decision to pull out of a bilateral summit between the leaders.

Obama comes to St Petersburg having secured support from key figures in the U.S. Congress for his call for limited U.S. strikes on Syria.

When asked whether Russia would agree to military action if Damascus were proven to have carried out a chemical weapons attack, Putin answered: "I do not rule it out."

However, he also made clear that Russia is not yet prepared to accept U.S. and European assertions that Assad’s forces were behind an August 21 chemical weapons attack that Washington says killed more than 1,400 people.

"We have no data that those chemical substances – it is not yet clear whether it was chemical weapons or simply some harmful chemical substances – were used precisely by the official government army."

Putin said no strikes on Syria could be legal without approval by the United Nations Security Council, where Moscow has a veto that it has repeatedly used to protect Assad.

"According to current international law, only the United Nations Security Council can sanction the use of force against a sovereign state. Any other approaches, means, to justify the use of force against an independent and sovereign state, are inadmissible," he said, adding it would amount to aggression.

The United States and France, its main ally on Syria, say they are prepared to launch strikes without a U.N. Security Council resolution because they believe Moscow would veto any authorization for force.

A senior Western official said that – while Moscow was unlikely to say so in public – there were signs Russian officials believe Assad was indeed responsible for the chemical weapons attack and it had strained Russian support for him.

Western countries are hoping that once any military strikes are finished, probably over Russia’s public objections, Moscow will be more cooperative than in the past in seeking a political solution, the official said.

Foreign ministers will also attend the G20 summit and will meet to discuss Syria.

Looking confident and relaxed, Putin said the burden was on other countries to convince Moscow Assad had used chemical arms. Russia has previously said it suspects rebels were behind the attack to provoke a U.S. military response. Putin said there was an "opinion" al Qaeda-linked rebels were to blame.

RUSSIA-U.S. TIES

He also said that Moscow had already sent to Syria some components of an S-300 missile system but was holding off on the delivery of final parts, something Putin threatened could happen if "existing international norms" were violated.

Western governments are concerned about the S-300 surface-to-air system, which could be used against their planes.

"We have supplied separate components, but the whole delivery is not finalized; we have suspended it for now. But if we see steps being undertaken that would violate existing international norms, we will think how to move forward, including on deliveries of such sensitive weapons," Putin said.

Regarding his relationship with Obama, Putin called the U.S. leader "a no-nonsense, practical person," and tried to dispel speculation that body language between the two leaders belied poor personal relations.

After cancelling a bilateral summit with Putin last month Obama said the Russian leader’s slouch can sometimes make him look "like the bored kid in the back of the classroom" but that his conversations with Putin were often constructive.

Obama had pulled out of the meeting with Putin, scheduled for before the G20 summit, after Russia granted temporary asylum to fugitive former U.S. spy contractor Edward Snowden, wanted by the United States for leaking information about surveillance programs. Putin said he still hoped to talk with Obama.

"I’m sure that even if we hold a meeting… on the sidelines of the summit, it will be useful in itself. In any case, we have many issues that we have been working on and we are interested in settling them," he said.

(Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow and John Irish in Paris; Editing by Peter Graff)

Congress and the Imperial Presidency Debate Syria – An Analysis

by Lawrence Davidson

Part I – The President Goes to Congress

President Obama has sidestepped the political hole he had dug for himself (what we might call the “red line” hole) over his proposed attack on Syria. Having insisted there must be “consequences” for a breach of international law, specifically the alleged use of banned chemical weapons by the Syrian government, he was faced with both popular American reluctance to support military action and Congressional pique over not being included in the decision process.

As a consequence President Obama announced on 31 August 2013 that he now supports a Congressional debate and vote on the issue of attacking Syria. Then he told us how he sees the situation, “This [Syrian chemical] attack is an assault on human dignity…. It risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemical weapons…. Ultimately this is not about who occupies this [White House] office at any given time, its about who we are as a country.”

Part II – The U.S. and Chemical Weapons

For all I know, the president really believes his own words, but I am pretty sure his implied question of “who we are as a country” is meant to be rhetorical. If one was to give an evidence-based answer to that inquiry, as it relates to chemical weapons, it would be embarrassing in the extreme. Lest we forget, the U.S. defoliated parts of Vietnam with a chemical weapon called Agent Orange and by its use killed a lot more than large swaths of jungle. Agent Orange killed and maimed an estimated 400,000 Vietnamese and an estimated half a million children have subsequently been born deformed. It also did a fatal job on many of the American troops that handled the stuff. Later, the U.S. sold chemical and biological weapons-grade material to Saddam Hussein and followed up by helping his army aim the stuff accurately at Iranian troops. Saddam also used it on the Iraqi Kurds. Then there is the fact that our “very special friend,” Israel, used phosphorous bombs (a banned chemical weapon) on the civilians of Gaza. At the time Israel did this, President Obama occupied the oval office. I don’t remember him displaying any moral angst or positioning U.S. ships in the eastern Mediterranean with cruise missiles aimed at Israeli airbases. The truth is that during all of these episodes no one in the government worried (at least publicly) about what our actions or lack thereof, said about what sort of country this is.

However, this question does deserve a direct answer. What sort of country is the U.S. in relation to the use of chemical weapons? The kindest answer one can give is it is a bloody hypocritical nation.

Part III – Back to Congress

Nonetheless, sending the issue of a possible attack on Syria to Congress is a timely political move for the president. It puts off having to face the dilemma of taking military action that cannot both constitute meaningful punishment for the violation of international law and, at the same time, keep the U.S. from becoming ever more deeply embroiled in the Syrian civil war.

It also could be a good political move for the U.S. as a whole because it creates a good precedent. Having Congress debate and vote on the issue of military action against Syria could help resuscitate the moribund War Powers Act. Although Obama claims he has the authority to launch an attack no matter what Congress decides, he would be politically hard pressed to do so if the legislators said don’t do it. Thus the maneuver might narrow the otherwise rapidly expanding powers of the imperial presidency. Of course, none of this means that Congress can’t be scared or otherwise bamboozled into giving the president the power to do something militarily stupid. Vietnam and Iraq stand as powerful precedents in that regard.

There is another very interesting potential consequence of the president’s going to Congress. It might create a situation where there is a publicly noticeable difference between the express desires of a majority of the voting population and the special interests now encouraging military action against Syria. In my last analysis I laid out the idea that in the interim between elections, the influence of powerful special interests have much more to say about policy than do the voters, most of whom pay little attention to foreign policy. Now, however, we have a rare moment when the populace is paying attention and polls indicate that a healthy majority do not want further intervention in the Middle East. Who will the Congress respond to in the upcoming debate and vote, their special interest constituents or the voting kind?

Part IV – Conclusion

Of course, the notion that the President of the United States, with or without Congressional approval, has the authority to act as the world’s “policeman” and punish violators of international laws, that it itself flaunts, is offensive and dangerous. There are international institutions in place such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) that, imperfect as they are, can be used to prosecute violations such as the use of banned weapons. (It is to be noted that the cause of “human dignity” would be greatly advanced if the U.S. would stop refusing to ratify the treaty empowering the ICC).

How do you characterize a situation where one or a small number of community members takes it upon themselves to go outside the law to punish alleged wrongdoers? Here in the U.S. this is known as “vigilante justice.” Most often this sort of behavior results is a “lynching” based on little or no reliable evidence.

President Obama’s going to Congress will not change the vigilante nature of U.S. intentions. Let’s just hope that Congress listens to the people this time around and tells the President to keep his cruise missiles to himself. And then, lets hope he does just that.

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DR. LAWRENCE DAVIDSON is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest; America’s Palestine: Popular and Offical Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history.

His blog To The Point Analyses now has its own Facebook page. Along with the analyses, the Facebook page will also have reviews, pictures, and other analogous material.

Americans oppose U.S. military strikes in Syria, polls find

President Obama said Tuesday he was confident he would be able to work with Congress to pass a resolution authorizing military intervention in Syria.

By Morgan Little

3:13 p.m. CDT, September 3, 2013

WASHINGTON – President Obama has to persuade not just Congress on military intervention in Syria. New polling shows the American public is highly skeptical of the administration’s plan for limited missile strikes in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government.

The divide tightens when Americans are asked about missile strikes conducted in conjunction with allied nations, with 51% in opposition and 46% in favor, according to the ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Americans are even more opposed to providing weapons to rebel forces in Syria, with 70% siding against a step that Obama has already decided to take, according to Pew.

Opposition to intervention appears to have grown since polling conducted last week by NBC News, which found a 50%-42% split against U.S. military action in response to the use of chemical weapons.

At the root of this opposition is not widespread skepticism about the chemical weapons attack , as 53% told Pew that there was clear evidence the Syrian government did carry it out.

One possible cause is the belief that Obama has yet to clearly state his case for action, with just 32% of Americans saying he has done so and 48% saying he has not, according to Pew.

Those who believe Obama has not offered an adequate explanation includes higher percentages of Republicans (60%) and independents (54%) than Democrats (33%). Pew’s polling was partly conducted after Obama’s Saturday address to the nation on his decision to ask Congress for its approval of any military response.

There’s little optimism about the possible aftermath of missile strikes, with 74% thinking they would prompt a backlash against the U.S. and allies, 61% predicting a long-term military commitment and just 33% thinking they would prevent the use of chemical weapons in the future, according to Pew.

Pew’s poll was conducted from Thursday to Sunday among a random sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. The ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday among a random sample of 1,012 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 points. Both were conducted through land lines and cellphones.

Western military action in Syria would be a "satanic intervention against a satanic regime", a leading Syrian opposition figure has warned.

Speaking to the Huffington Post UK, Haytham al-Manna, the Paris-based spokesman of the National Coordination Committee (NCC), said: "Our position is against any [western] aggression against Syria. There is no [option of] military aggression against the regime, it will be against.. the population."

The NCC, which consists of a dozen or so secular, leftist political parties inside Syria, is not a member of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the coalition of opposition groups recognised as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people by several western governments. The latter has long supported western military intervention against Assad; the former does not.

The NCC’s Manna, a veteran human-rights activist whose brother was killed by the Assad regime, said US ordnance won’t "make the distinction between military and civilian targets. I saw what happened in Iraq..and all the [previous] American interventions."

Manna’s brother was killed by the Assad regime but he doesn’t support military intervention

Manna added: "We are against the intervention in Syria of Hizbollah [and] of foreign fighters from al Qaeda. We cannot build democracy in Syria with others."

Criticising the United States, Turkey, Israel and other regional powers, he said: "We are not in favour of a satanic intervention against a satanic regime."

Several other opposition groups have criticised the NCC for being too soft on the Syrian government, with the rebelFree Syrian Army (FSA) dismissing it as "just the other face of the same coin". But Manna insisted that the "political opposition outside Syria" is a "minority inside the country". The NCC spokesman claimed that "the majority of Syrian society is against any [foreign military] intervention".

Referring to the proposed ‘Geneva II’ UN-backed peace conference in Switzerland, Manna warned that "we have now the opportunity.. to push all parties, the regime and the opposition, to go to Geneva.. Up to now, [the Assad regime] accepted it had to go to Geneva.. I am not sure [Assad] will go at the end of the year."

Manna wants pressure to be put on Assad and the rebels to attend peace talks in Geneva

However, most of Syria’s opposition groups, as well as a growing number of Western diplomats, believe Assad will not agree to negotiate with his opponents unless there is a credible threat of US-led military action. Manna disagrees. "If [Assad] doesn’t accept [he has] to go, Russia will change its position [of support] because it is an essential part of Geneva II."

Responding to his critics who take a more hardline stance against the regime, and insist on Assad’s resignation as a precondition to peace talks, Manna said that the rebels had been refusing to negotiate with the Syrian president for over two years "and we lost more than 70,000 people in Syria because of this position". The prolonging of the Syrian civil war, he explained, "is only in the interests of Assad and al Qaeda".

For Manna, there is no alternative to negotiations. "The regime and the opposition must go to Geneva II without preconditions," he told HuffPost UK. "The only precondition is applying [the principles of the] Geneva communique. And this is in the interests of the democratic opposition, not of al Qaeda [or] the Islamists." TheGeneva communique, published in June 2012, called on all parties to the conflict to recommit to a "sustained cessation of armed violence" and immediately implement the then UN envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan.

Manna, however, pointed out that enforcing international law "is not a decision for Congress or for the French parliament.. We don’t accept any unilateral decision from any country in the world, whether it is the US or Iran or the UK."

Is The United States Going To Go To War With Syria Over A Natural Gas Pipeline?

By Michael Snyder, on September 3rd, 2013

Why has the little nation of Qatar spent 3 billion dollars to support the rebels in Syria? Could it be because Qatar is the largest exporter of liquid natural gas in the world and Assad won’t let them build a natural gas pipeline through Syria? Of course. Qatar wants to install a puppet regime in Syria that will allow them to build a pipeline which will enable them to sell lots and lots of natural gas to Europe. Why is Saudi Arabia spending huge amounts of money to help the rebels and why has Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan been "jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime"? Well, it turns out that Saudi Arabia intends to install their own puppet government in Syria which will allow the Saudis to control the flow of energy through the region. On the other side, Russia very much prefers the Assad regime for a whole bunch of reasons. One of those reasons is that Assad is helping to block the flow of natural gas out of the Persian Gulf into Europe, thus ensuring higher profits for Gazprom. Now the United States is getting directly involved in the conflict. If the U.S. is successful in getting rid of the Assad regime, it will be good for either the Saudis or Qatar (and possibly for both), and it will be really bad for Russia. This is a strategic geopolitical conflict about natural resources, religion and money, and it really has nothing to do with chemical weapons at all.

It has been common knowledge that Qatar has desperately wanted to construct a natural gas pipeline that will enable it to get natural gas to Europe for a very long time. The following is an excerpt from an articlefrom 2009…

Qatar has proposed a gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey in a sign the emirate is considering a further expansion of exports from the world’s biggest gasfield after it finishes an ambitious programme to more than double its capacity to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG).

"We are eager to have a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey," Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar, said last week, following talks with the Turkish president Abdullah Gul and the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the western Turkish resort town of Bodrum. "We discussed this matter in the framework of co-operation in the field of energy. In this regard, a working group will be set up that will come up with concrete results in the shortest possible time," he said, according to Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.

Other reports in the Turkish press said the two states were exploring the possibility of Qatar supplying gas to the strategic Nabucco pipeline project, which would transport Central Asian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe, bypassing Russia. A Qatar-to-Turkey pipeline might hook up with Nabucco at its proposed starting point in eastern Turkey. Last month, Mr Erdogan and the prime ministers of four European countries signed a transit agreement for Nabucco, clearing the way for a final investment decision next year on the EU-backed project to reduce European dependence on Russian gas.

"For this aim, I think a gas pipeline between Turkey and Qatar would solve the issue once and for all," Mr Erdogan added, according to reports in several newspapers. The reports said two different routes for such a pipeline were possible. One would lead from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to Turkey. The other would go through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey. It was not clear whether the second option would be connected to the Pan-Arab pipeline, carrying Egyptian gas through Jordan to Syria. That pipeline, which is due to be extended to Turkey, has also been proposed as a source of gas for Nabucco.

Based on production from the massive North Field in the Gulf, Qatar has established a commanding position as the world’s leading LNG exporter. It is consolidating that through a construction programme aimed at increasing its annual LNG production capacity to 77 million tonnes by the end of next year, from 31 million tonnes last year. However, in 2005, the emirate placed a moratorium on plans for further development of the North Field in order to conduct a reservoir study.

As you just read, there were two proposed routes for the pipeline. Unfortunately for Qatar, Saudi Arabia said no to the first route and Syria said no to the second route. The following is from an absolutely outstanding article in the Guardian…

In 2009 – the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria – Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was "to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas."

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a "direct slap in the face" to Qatar’s plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it will be"completely" in Saudi Arabia’s hands and will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports", according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

If Qatar is able to get natural gas flowing into Europe, that will be a significant blow to Russia. So the conflict in Syria is actually much more about a pipeline than it is about the future of the Syrian people. In a recent article, Paul McGuire summarized things quite nicely…

The Nabucco Agreement was signed by a handful of European nations and Turkey back in 2009. It was an agreement to run a natural gas pipeline across Turkey into Austria, bypassing Russia again with Qatar in the mix as a supplier to a feeder pipeline via the proposed Arab pipeline from Libya to Egypt to Nabucco (is the picture getting clearer?). The problem with all of this is that a Russian backed Syria stands in the way.

Qatar would love to sell its LNG to the EU and the hot Mediterranean markets. The problem for Qatar in achieving this is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have already said "NO" to an overland pipe cutting across the Land of Saud. The only solution for Qatar if it wants to sell its oil is to cut a deal with the U.S.

Recently Exxon Mobile and Qatar Petroleum International have made a $10 Billion deal that allows Exxon Mobile to sell natural gas through a port in Texas to the UK and Mediterranean markets. Qatar stands to make a lot of money and the only thing standing in the way of their aspirations is Syria.

The US plays into this in that it has vast wells of natural gas, in fact the largest known supply in the world. There is a reason why natural gas prices have been suppressed for so long in the US. This is to set the stage for US involvement in the Natural Gas market in Europe while smashing the monopoly that the Russians have enjoyed for so long. What appears to be a conflict with Syria is really a conflict between the U.S. and Russia!

The main cities of turmoil and conflict in Syria right now are Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. These are the same cities that the proposed gas pipelines happen to run through. Qatar is the biggest financier of the Syrian uprising, having spent over $3 billion so far on the conflict. The other side of the story is Saudi Arabia, which finances anti-Assad groups in Syria. The Saudis do not want to be marginalized by Qatar; thus they too want to topple Assad and implant their own puppet government, one that would sign off on a pipeline deal and charge Qatar for running their pipes through to Nabucco.

Yes, I know that this is all very complicated.

But no matter how you slice it, there is absolutely no reason for the United States to be getting involved in this conflict.

Al-Qaeda linked terrorists in Syria have beheaded all 24 Syrian passengers traveling from Tartus to Ras al-Ain in northeast of Syria, among them a mother and a 40-days old infant.

Gunmen from the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant stopped the bus on the road in Talkalakh and killed everyone before setting the bus on fire.

Is this really who we want to be "allied" with?

And of course once we strike Syria, the war could escalate into a full-blown conflict very easily.

If you believe that the Obama administration would never send U.S. troops into Syria, you are just being naive. In fact, according to Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, the proposed authorization to use military force that has been sent to Congress would leave the door wide open for American "boots on the ground"…

The proposed AUMF focuses on Syrian WMD but is otherwise very broad. It authorizes the President to use any element of the U.S. Armed Forces and any method of force. It does not contain specific limits on targets – either in terms of the identity of the targets (e.g. the Syrian government, Syrian rebels, Hezbollah, Iran) or the geography of the targets. Its main limit comes on the purposes for which force can be used. Four points are worth making about these purposes. First, the proposed AUMF authorizes the President to use force “in connection with” the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war. (It does not limit the President’s use force to the territory of Syria, but rather says that the use of force must have a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian conflict. Activities outside Syria can and certainly do have a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war.). Second, the use of force must be designed to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of WMDs “within, to or from Syria” or (broader yet) to “protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.” Third, the proposed AUMF gives the President final interpretive authority to determine when these criteria are satisfied (“as he determines to be necessary and appropriate”). Fourth, the proposed AUMF contemplates no procedural restrictions on the President’s powers (such as a time limit).

I think this AUMF has much broader implications thanIlya Somin described. Some questions for Congress to ponder:

(1) Does the proposed AUMF authorize the President to take sides in the Syrian Civil War, or to attack Syrian rebels associated with al Qaeda, or to remove Assad from power? Yes, as long as the President determines that any of these entities has a (mere) connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war, and that the use of force against one of them would prevent or deter the use or proliferation of WMD within, or to and from, Syria, or protect the U.S. or its allies (e.g. Israel) against the (mere) threat posed by those weapons. It is very easy to imagine the President making such determinations with regard to Assad or one or more of the rebel groups.

(2) Does the proposed AUMF authorize the President to use force against Iran or Hezbollah, in Iran or Lebanon? Again, yes, as long as the President determines that Iran or Hezbollah has a (mere) a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war, and the use of force against Iran or Hezbollah would prevent or deter the use or proliferation of WMD within, or to and from, Syria, or protect the U.S. or its allies (e.g. Israel) against the (mere) threat posed by those weapons.

Would you like to send your own son or your own daughter to fight in Syria just so that a natural gas pipeline can be built?

I’ll tell you this story and then I really do have to go. My five-year-old grandson, as I was leaving San Francisco yesterday, he said to me, Mimi, my name, Mimi, war with Syria, are you yes war with Syria, no, war with Syria. And he’s five years old. We’re not talking about war; we’re talking about action. Yes war with Syria, no with war in Syria. I said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ He said, ‘I think no war.’

Unfortunately, his grandmother and most of our other insane "leaders" in Washington D.C. seem absolutely determined to take us to war.

In the end, how much American blood will be spilled over a stupid natural gas pipeline?

No vote could spark constitutional crisis if White House launches attack anyway

Paul Joseph WatsonInfowars.com September 4, 2013

Current indications suggest that Congress could reject the Obama administration’s draft resolution on Syria, setting up a potential constitutional crisis if Obama goes ahead and launches the attack anyway, as Secretary of State John Kerry has clearly suggested will happen.

According to a whip list compiled by the Hill, while the Senate vote to authorize the attack is already in the bag, 44 members of the House are either “no” or “leaning no” compared to just 17 who are “yes” or “leaning yes”. 31 Congressmembers are “undecided” or “unclear,” according to the Hill.

That leaves a further 343 members of Congress who have yet to take a public stance on the issue, although with national polls of Americans clearly showing that a majority oppose the strike, negative sentiment towards the idea of launching an attack seems to be the dominant factor.

“Most House Republicans who have taken a stance are vowing to vote no, or are leaning no,” the report notes. Despite receiving the backing of leadership allies like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner, the consensus is that Obama faces an “uphill battle” to convince Congress as a whole.

A great deal of this opposition could of course be fairly easily overturned if we were to be presented with another convenient chemical weapons attack or a strike on US interests blamed on Assad before the vote takes place.

However, as we highlighted on Monday, both Secretary of State John Kerry and another State Department official have indicated that Obama will go ahead with military intervention anyway even if Congress does not give the green light.

“We don’t contemplate that the Congress is going to vote no,” Kerry asserted on Sunday, adding that Obama has the right to order attacks “no matter what Congress does”.

Kerry restated the same position yesterday during his confrontation with Senator Rand Paul, prompting Paul to respond, “You’re making a joke of us, you’re making us into theater.”

Obama has also insisted that he has the authority to launch the attack without Congressional backing, emphasizing once again that the whole process appears to be little more than a fig leaf or mere window dressing for a decision that has already been made.

The Obama administration’s apparent disregard for the fact that the founders intended war powers to be firmly within the control of Congress is setting the stage for a major constitutional confrontation the likes of which America hasn’t witnessed for decades.

Let us recall the words of James Madison, the architect of the Constitution, who stated, “In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature.”

Should Congress reject the authorization to launch the attack on Syria and the White House, as it has promised, goes ahead and orders the strike anyway, a constitutional crisis could be sparked and at the very least there will be calls from Republicans to begin impeachment proceedings against Obama, just as there were when he failed to obtain Congressional approval for the attack on Libya in 2011.

Corporate media makes it sound like Secretary of State opposed to boots on the ground

Kurt NimmoInfowars.com September 4, 2013

If the CIA’s al-Qaeda shock troops at work in Syria get their hands on chemical weapons, Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, the United States should respond with ground troops.

“In the event Syria imploded, for instance, or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling into the hands of al-Nusra or someone else and it was clearly in the interest of our allies — and all of us, the British, the French and others to prevent those weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of the worst elements,” Kerry told Congress, “I don’t want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to the president of the United States to secure our country.”

Kerry said Obama does not want to discount the possibility of U.S. boots on the ground. “I don’t want anything coming out of this hearing that leaves any door open to any possibilities, so let’s shut that door now, as tight was we can,” he responded following remarks made by Senator Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, who said Congress will make sure U.S. troops will not be used.

The Secretary of State said bombing Syria and possibly deploying troops to topple the al-Assad regime and defeat his military should not be characterized as going to war.

“Let me be clear: President Obama is not asking America to go to war,” he told the committee.

Near the end of Kerry’s testimony — and as if on cue — professional and foundation funded protester Medea Benjamin of Code Pink interrupted the proceedings by stating the obvious: “we don’t want another war” and “launching cruise missiles means another war.”

While ideologues of the so-called “anti-war” left have offered milquetoast dissent or even supported Barack Obama’s planned attack on Syria, conservative icons in both politics and media are leading the backlash against another potentially disastrous foreign intervention.

It’s a phenomenon that many are attempting to understand – what happened to the substantial and vehement army of anti-war leftists who opposed George W. Bush in the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq? The vast majority of them undoubtedly voted for Obama once if not twice, and are apparently placing their slavish devotion to the President above the interests of the country by refusing to speak out against an aggressive intervention that could spark a far wider regional conflict.

While leftists have largely remained silent , media conservatives like Matt Drudge and Pat Buchanan, along with political heavyweights like Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Justin Amash have comprised the tip of the spear in opposing the White House’s rush to war.

“Where is the antiwar left on the war?” he asks, “Mostly silent. Not even Vermont’s Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders has come out in early opposition of a war with Syria.”

“Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning President has killed thousands of innocent children across the Middle East with his drone strikes as well as the antiwar left with his empty rhetoric,” adds Girdusky, calling on Republicans to “leave behind the foreign policy of President Bush.”

Just check out some of the tweets from recent days by leading conservative thinkers in both media and politics, individuals who are not only putting the so-called anti-war left to shame but also establishment Republicans like McCain, Graham and Boehner who have all voted to back Obama’s war.

“I believe you should choose the negotiating track first, and should you fail, then moving to the second option” — backing the rebels — “becomes more acceptable,” said Chomsky, while calling for an attack so long as it is backed by the United Nations.

One notable exception on the left has been Oliver Stone, who has aggressively opposed Obama on Syria and recently called the President a snake in light of the NSA spying controversy and the Edward Snowden affair.

Conservative backlash against an attack on Syria has also been dovetailed by a wave of active duty and military veterans taking to Twitter to express their opposition to fighting on the same side as Al-Qaeda as part of the #IdidntJoin meme.

Syrian activists have taken to forming “human shields” around military installations in the capital of Damascus in efforts to discourage the Obama administration from authorizing “limited” military strikes on the Syrian regime.

According to RT, a coalition of activists have placed themselves around the predicted target of Mount Qasioun, an installation northeast of the Syrian capital of Damascus home to “security and military buildings” as well as Syrian regime armed forces.

Still from RT video

“Protesters rallying beside the place called themselves a ‘human shield’ and hold banners featuring slogans such as ‘No more American bombing democracy’ and ‘Hands off Syria,’” RT reported today.

Still from RT video

“We are here to express our loyalty to our country in the face of American threats,” a participant reportedly told RT, adding, “We don’t want what they did in Iraq over chemical weapons claims to be done in our country.”

Still from RT video

Should Obama authorize military strikes in the face of this form of protest, he will have assuredly assumed the role of war criminal, if his past transgressions haven’t already earned him that title.

Late last month, we documented how the Syrian people were already hard-pressed to find places they could safely hide from Obama’s “humanitarian love bombs” should he sway in the direction of cruise missile strikes.

“We live in the capital. Every turn, every street, every neighborhood has some government target. Where do we hide?” one panicked Damascus resident told Reuters.

“What about my friend?” asked another woman whose family was lucky enough to escape to a safe area. “Her whole family lives in this neighborhood. There is no place for them to go.”

Apparently unfazed by the UK parliament’s historic “no” vote last week in response to Prime Minister David Cameron’s request to attack Syria, Obama, bellicose members of Congress and a compliant lapdog media have been undeterred in their efforts to try to convince the American people chemical weapons used in Syria pose a serious threat to American interests, despite the fact no evidence has been produced directly implicating the Syrian government.

A new report from Russia lends evidence that the March 19 chemical attack in Syria was in fact carried out by the Obama-backed Syria rebels, highlighting the reality of the latest attacks.

In a new breaking report released by the Russian Foreign Ministry just moments ago, it has now been announced that the March 19 chemical weapons responsible for the attacks in Syria and blamed on Assad’s government army are linked up to rebel-made weaponry. Specifically, the findings state that the chemical weapon shells are very much different from the standard Syrian army weaponry and extremely similar to those made by the US-funded rebels who have been caught time and time again burning villages full of innocents.

The report from Russia’s RT reads:

“Probes from Khan al-Assal show chemicals used in the March 19 attack did not belong to standard Syrian army ammunition, and that the shell carrying the substance was similar to those made by a rebel fighter group, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated.”

And perhaps more importantly, the report goes on to mention that “the way is being paved for military action” through the blame on Assad for launching the attacks despite evidence showing the contrary. In fact, Syrian officials have gone on record in the past saying that evidence was submitted to the UN showing how there was information pointing towards the rebels carrying out the attacks. The relationship to the latest attacks is undeniable.

Prominent Analysts Label Attacks ‘False Flag’

The latest report coincides with what major analysts have been saying about the entire event as well as what I have been saying in reports regarding the latest attacks. Initially pushing the concept into the media, it was Ron Paul who went on air and labeled the attacks a false flag in a report that has now gone international in a major way. Paul was then followed by Pat Buchanan, who went on air saying that the attacks ‘reeked of a false flag’.

Now, it seems extremely clear to those who are following what’s going on that we were indeed correct in this analysis when considering this news. Yet, despite this reality, Obama and his handlers continue to push the nation into a hot war with Syria that could involve boots on the ground and the ignition of heavy military action against Assad.

People injured in what the government said was a chemical weapons attack, breathe through oxygen masks as they are treated at a hospital in the Syrian city of Aleppo March 19, 2013 (Reuters / George Ourfalian)

Probes from Khan al-Assal show chemicals used in the March 19 attack did not belong to standard Syrian army ammunition, and that the shell carrying the substance was similar to those made by a rebel fighter group, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated.

A statement released by the ministry on Wednesday particularly drew attention to the “massive stove-piping of various information aimed at placing the responsibility for the alleged chemical weapons use in Syria on Damascus, even though the results of the UN investigation have not yet been revealed.”

By such means “the way is being paved for military action” against Damascus, the ministry pointed out.

But the samples taken at the site of the March 19 attack and analyzed by Russian experts indicate that a projectile carrying the deadly nerve agent sarin was most likely fired at Khan al-Assal by the rebels, the ministry statement suggests, outlining the 100-page report handed over to the UN by Russia.

The key points of the report have been given as follows:

• the shell used in the incident “does not belong to the standard ammunition of the Syrian army and was crudely according to type and parameters of the rocket-propelled unguided missiles manufactured in the north of Syria by the so-called Bashair al-Nasr brigade”;

• RDX, which is also known as hexogen or cyclonite, was used as the bursting charge for the shell, and it is “not used in standard chemical munitions”;

• soil and shell samples contain “the non-industrially synthesized nerve agent sarin and diisopropylfluorophosphate,” which was “used by Western states for producing chemical weapons during World War II.”

Syrians behead Christians for helping military, as CIA ships in arms

A priest and another Christian were beheaded before a cheering crowd by Syrian insurgents who say they aided and abetted the enemy, President Bashar Assad’s military, foreign media reported.

An undated video that made the Internet rounds on Wednesday showed two unnamed men with tied hands surrounded by a cheering crowd of dozens, just moments before their heads were cut off with a small knife, Syria Report said. The attackers in the video then lifted the head for show, and placed it back on the body. The incident took place in the countryside of Idlib, the media report said.

Syria Report said that foreign militants have increased attacks on civilians in recent weeks — and that many of these insurgents are supported by the West and by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. Just recently, a Catholic priest was recently executed by radicals, and last month, an entire Christian village in Homs was burned to the ground, Syria Report said. Moreover, two Christian bishops kidnapped in Aleppo at the beginning of the year are still missing.

The reported beheading of the two Christians comes about the same time America has started sending arms to rebel fighters, the Wall Street Journal revealed this week. The Journal reported the Central Intelligence Agency just began transporting weapons to Jordan for eventual transfer to Syrian fighters.

The weapons transfer is aimed at helping Free Syrian forces oust Mr. Assad. It’s scheduled to coincide with arms shipments from other European and Arab allies for a planned and coordinated rebel attack set for August, the Journal reported.

The CIA weapons transfer will take about three weeks, and involves light arms — and possibly antitank missiles, the Journal said.

The president has done a pretty good job of selling his plan to congressional leaders.

He has not, however, sold it to the American people.

Thus, when members of Congress decide which side they’re on in the Syrian intervention votes that are expected to take place next week, they will have to consider whether they want to respond to pro-war pressure from inside-the-Beltway—as so many did when they authorized action against Iraq—or to the anti-war sentiments of their constituents.

And, even as the president makes his case, skepticism about intervention appears to be growing.

A Pew Research survey released Tuesday found support for air strikes had collapsed from 45 percent to 29 percent, while opposition had spiked. “The public has long been skeptical of U.S. involvement in Syria, but an April survey found more support than opposition to the idea of a US-led military response if the use of chemical weapons was confirmed,” Pew reported Tuesday. “The new survey finds both broad concern over the possible consequences of military action in Syria and little optimism it will be effective.”

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, released after the president announced he would seek congressional authorization for an attack on Syria, and after several days of administration lobbying for that attack, found that voters are overwhelmingly opposed to intervention.

“The United States says it has determined that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons in the civil war there,” the Post/ABC poll asked. “Given this, do you support or oppose the United States launching missile strikes against the Syrian government?”

* The fiercest opposition is among independents, who disapprove of intervention by a 66-30 margin. That figure suggests that members of Congress who represent swing districts might actually be more vulnerable if they vote to authorize the attack.

In addition to being broad-based, the opposition sentiment runs deep. Even if US allies such as Britain and France join in, a 51-46 majority is still opposed to missile strikes.

The idea of going further and trying to topple the Syrian regime appears to be a political non-starter. Seventy percent of those surveyed oppose supplying weapons to the Syrian rebels, while just 30 percent support the proposal that has been floated by President Obama and Republican hawks such as Arizona Senator John McCain.

What is especially notable about the polling data is the intensity of opposition to any sort of intervention—including missile strikes targeted at suspected chemical weapons sites—among groups that lean Democratic at election time.

* Sixty-five percent of women surveyed for The Post/ABC polloppose missile strikes, while just 30 percent favor them. (The Pew survey found an even lower level of support among women: just 19 percent)

* Among Americans under age 40 who were surveyed for the Post/ABC poll, 65 percent are opposed.

Regionally, the Democratic-leaning states of the Midwest and the Northeast are more opposed than the Republican-leaning states of the South.

It is true that foreign policy is not always made on the basis of polling data. It is true that patterns of war weariness and concern about how to address the use of chemical weapons makes the current circumstance volatile. And it is true that poll numbers can change. But it is worth noting that discomfort with launching air strikes—let alone any other intervention—is running strong among voters who have followed the story closely and among voters who have only recently begun to engage with it. Pew reports that “opposition to the idea is prevalent regardless of people’s level of interest—nearly half oppose airstrikes among the most and least attentive segments of the public.”

MSNBC talking head, former cop and indefatigable cheerleader for Obama and the Democrat side of the one party political system, Chris Matthews, has declared Syrian babies and grandmothers must die to salvage Obama’s dismal political future. He didn’t say it like that, of course, but he might as well have.

It should be obvious to all who bother to pay attention there is no difference between Obama, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, Barbara Boxer, et al, ad infinitum and ad nauseam.

All to varying degrees and with differing tact support the War Party and the apparently endless drive of the military-industrial complex to foment profitable wars and shake and bake the geopolitical chessboard to keep the game going for the bankers and their transnational corporate buddies. Because the political system is rigged like a game of three-card Monte and the antiwar movement is dead as a doornail, none of them have to worry about losing their cushy careers.

It’s Matthews’ job to provide cover – no matter how feeble – for mass murder, even though hardly anybody tunes MSNBC in anymore except a few hundred thousand diehard “progressives” who are pathetically deluded into thinking military intervention in Syria is somehow humanitarian.

Note: English translation of the Le Figaro interview reposted from SANA, the Syrian state government news agency.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to Le Figaro. Following is the full text:

Le Figaro: Mr. President, the Americans and the French have accused you of perpetrating a chemical attack on the 21st of August in Ghouta, which led to the death of hundreds. Do you have evidence to suggest that your army did not launch the attack?

President al-Assad: First of all, anyone making such an accusation is also responsible for providing the evidence to substantiate the allegation. We have challenged them to present a shred of legitimate evidence, which they have not been able to do. Since their foreign policy should be tailored to suit the interests of their own people, we have challenged them to present legitimate evidence to their own public opinion to substantiate their claims; again they have not done so.

Secondly, where is the logic in us carrying out an attack of this nature: two years into the crisis I can confidently state that the situation on the ground is much better now than it was a year ago; how is it conceivable then that an army making significant advancements on the ground through conventional armament would resort to using weapons of mass destruction?

I am neither confirming nor denying that we possess such weapons – this is not a matter for discussion. For the sake of argument, if the army had such weapons and decided to use them, is it conceivable that it would use them in areas where its own troops are deployed? Where is the logic in that? Additionally is it really plausible that the use of these weapons in a heavily populated area in the suburbs of the capital did not kill tens of thousands; these substances travel in the air.

Le Figaro: Were soldiers from the Syrian Army injured by the weapons?

President al-Assad: Yes, in the ‘Baharia’ area, in the suburbs of Damascus; the inspectors from the UN team met with them in hospital.

Le Figaro: Some do acknowledge that there has been some advancement by the army on the ground; however in other areas the rebels have also advanced and you are looking to wipe them out.

President al-Assad: Again, the areas in question are residential areas. The use of chemical weapons in these areas would result in the deaths of tens of thousands. All the accusations are based on unsubstantiated claims made by the terrorists and random pictures and videos posted on the Internet.

Le Figaro: The Americans have stated that they have intercepted a telephone conversation between an executive in you inner circle and officers in the Army giving the order to use these weapons.

We will only discuss substantiated truths

President al-Assad: If the Americans, the French or the British had a single shred of evidence they would have disclosed it from day one. We will not contest rumours and dubious allegations; we will only discuss substantiated truths – if they have any, they should present them.

Le Figaro: Is it possible that someone from your inner circle or officers in the Syrian Army took the decision without your knowledge?

President al-Assad: Again – regardless of whether we do or do not possess such weapons, in any country that does possess these weapons, the decision to deploy is usually centralized. Either way, this is classified military information.

Le Figaro: But this is what Jihad Makdissi stated.

President al-Assad: No, at the time, Jihad said that should we possess these weapons, we would not use them. Whether we do or do not possess them is an entirely Syrian affair.

Le Figaro: President Obama has postponed a military strike on Syria, how do you explain this?

President al-Assad: Some have seen Obama as weak because of his decision to withdraw or delay a possible strike by days or weeks; by waging a war on Syria, others have seen him as a strong leader of a powerful country.

Power lies in your ability to prevent wars not in igniting them

From my perspective, power lies in your ability to prevent wars not in igniting them. Power comes from ones ability to stand up and acknowledge their mistakes; if Obama was strong, he would have stood up and said that there is no evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, he would have stood up and said that the right way forward is to wait for the results of the UN investigations and workthrough the UN Security Council. However, as I see it, he is weak because he succumbed to internal pressure from small groups and threatened military action. As I said strong leaders are those who prevent wars not those who inflame them.

Le Figaro: What do you say to members of congress whose vote will determine whether or not there will be any military action?

President al-Assad: Before they vote, they should ask themselves a simple question: What have previous wars achieved for America, or even for Europe? What has the world achieved from the war in Libya and the spread of terrorism in its aftermath? What has the world achieved from the wars in Iraq and other places? What will the world achieve from supporting terrorism in Syria?

Members of congress are entrusted to serve in the best interests of their country. Before they vote, they need to weigh up their decision in the interests of their own country. It is not in the interests of the US to perpetuate instability and extremism in the Middle East. It is not in their interests to continue – what George Bush started – spreading wars in the world.

If they think logically and in the interests of their country, they will not find any benefits to these wars. However many of them they have not mastered the art of logic in their political decision-making.

Le Figaro: How will you respond to these strikes, should they happen?

President al-Assad: If we think of the Middle East as a barrel of explosives close to a fire that is coming ever closer, then it becomes clear that the issue is no longer contained to a Syrian response, but rather what will happen after the first strike. The architects of the war can define the first strike – in other words they can determine what they will do, but beyond that it is impossible for anyone to predict what will follow. Once the barrel explodes, everyone loses control; nobody can determine the outcome, however what is certain is the spread of chaos, wars and extremism in all its forms everywhere.

Le Figaro: Is there a danger that it will spill into a regional conflict?

The issue today is no longer just about Syria, but about a whole region that is interlinked

President al-Assad: Of course, this is the first and most dangerous risk. The issue today is no longer just about Syria, but about a whole region that is interlinked, socially, politically and militarily; the resulting challenges are regional, not just Syrian.

Le Figaro: So is it likely that Israel would be one of your targets?

President al-Assad: You don’t really expect me to announce how we will respond?! It is not realistic that we would announce our plans, but as I said there are many players involved and narrowing the conversation to just one player diminishes the significance of what will happen.

Le Figaro: What do you say to Jordan who is known to be training the rebels on the ground? What is at risk for Jordan should the strike occur in favour of the rebels and terrorists?

President al-Assad: Our policy has always been to not export our problems to neighbouring countries. We have been striking the thousands of terrorists that have entered Syria via Jordan, and Jordan has announced that it would not provide a base for any military strikes against Syria. However, should we not succeed in fighting terrorism in Syria, we can only expect that it will spread to other countries along with the ensuing chaos and extremism.

Le Figaro: So are you warning Jordan and Turkey?

Our priority is to fight terrorism within Syria

President al-Assad: We have said this before and we have communicated this to them directly and indirectly. I believe Jordan is fully aware of the situation, despite the pressure on it to continue to be a route for this terrorism. As for Erdogan, I don’t think he has a clue of what he is doing. Our priority is to fight terrorism within Syria.

Le Figaro: How will your allies – Hezbollah and Iran – respond to any strike? Are you counting on their support should you be attacked?

President al-Assad: I do not wish to speak on their behalf, their statements have been very clear. We are all aware that this is a regional issue and as such it is impossible to separate the interests of Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and other countries that are supporting us.

Today, stability in the region depends on the situation in Syria; Russia fully fathoms this. Russia is neither defending the President nor Syria, but rather it is defending stability in this region knowing all too well that otherwise it will also be affected. To assess the situation through the narrow lens of a Syrian-Iranian alliance is a naïve and over simplistic view; we are dealing with a situation of far greater significance.

Le Figaro: Have the Russians reassured you that they will reach out to the Americans to try to attenuate the strike?

President al-Assad: I don’t think anyone can trust the Americans; I don’t think there is a country in the world that can guarantee that the Americans will or will not take any form of action towards another country, so it is pointless to look for such reassurances. The Americans adopt one position in the morning, only to endorse the complete opposite in the evening. As long as the US does not comply with or listen to the UN, we should not be reassured.

Le Figaro: How can we stop the war, the crisis in Syria has been on going for more than two-and-half years? You have suggested a National Unity government, the international community has suggested Geneva II, how can we stop the blood bath in Syria?

Solution lies in stopping the influx of terrorists into Syria, stopping financial and military support to them

President al-Assad: Discussing a solution at the beginning of the crisis is very different to discussing it today. From the beginning I have emphasised that a resolution can only be achieved through dialogue, which would lead to solutions that can be implemented through political measures.

The situation today is different; today we are fighting terrorists, 80-90% of them affiliated to Al-Qaeda. These terrorists are not interested in reform, or politics, or legislations. The only way to deal with the terrorists is to strike them; only then can we talk about political steps. So in response to your question, the solution today lies in stopping the influx of terrorists into Syria and stopping the financial, military or any other support they receive.

Le Figaro: Who is supporting them?

President al-Assad: Primarily Saudi Arabia, followed by Turkey and Jordan by streaming the militants into Syria, as well as France, America and Britain.

Le Figaro: Do you have proof that France has provided arms to the terrorists?

President al-Assad: It is evident enough through France’s political stance and its provocative role in the situation as dictated to it by Qatar and other countries.

Le Figaro: Mr. President, are you willing to invite the opposition to come to Syria, to guarantee their safety in order for you all to sit around a table and find a solution?

President al-Assad: In January of this year we launched an initiative that addresses the points you raised and others in order to move forward with a political solution. However, this opposition that you refer to was manufactured abroad – manufactured by Qatar, France and others – it is not a Syrian opposition, and as such it takes orders from its masters who have forbidden it from engaging with this initiative. In addition to the fact that since they were manufactured abroad they lack local public support. Despite all their shortfalls, we did invite them but they did not respond.

Le Figaro: However some did not respond for fear of their security, they fear being imprisoned like Abdul Aziz al-Khayer. Can you provide them with guarantees?

President al-Assad: We have provided guarantees and I have spoken of these political points including guarantees of security to any member of the opposition wanting to come to Syria for the purpose of dialogue. However, they were either not willing to come or maybe they weren’t given permission to come. We have not killed or captured any member of the opposition. Abdul Aziz al-Khayer’s friends are all in Syria – you can see for yourself. Why would we target one of them and ignore the rest? Where is the logic in that?

Le Figaro: How do you explain the French position towards you today, you were once friends with Sarkozy and you enjoyed a friendly relationship with France and visited several times? How do you explain this U-turn?

French policy towards Syria is entirely based on American and Qatari desires

President al-Assad: It wasn’t a friendly relationship. It was clear from the beginning that France, at the request of the Americans, was trying to manipulate Syrian policy. Even the positive shift towards Syria in 2008 was due to Qatari influence, and so was the negative U-turn in 2011. It is very clear that French policy towards Syria is entirely based on American and Qatari desires.

Le Figaro: French Parliamentarians will meet on Wednesday. There is a big debate in France now, with some believing that Hollande has gone too far on this issue. What is your message to the French Parliamentarians before they convene and vote on the strike?

Go back to the principles of the French Revolution, Liberty, Justice, Equality

President al-Assad: A few days ago the French Interior Minister was quoted as saying that “France’s participation is dependent on the US congress,” with no mention to the French Parliament. Allow me then to pose this question to you: To whom does the French government answer to – the French parliament or the US congress? Since 2003, on the back of the invasion of Iraq and its earlier position before the war, France has relinquished its independence and has become a part of American foreign policy. This applies to Chirac after the war on Iraq, to Sarkozy, and today to Hollande.

So the question really is: will the meeting of the French parliamentarians return the independence of France’s decisions back to the French? We hope that this would be the case. Since they will be working in the interests of France, will the representatives of the French people take the side of extremism and terrorism? Will they support those who perpetrated the September 11 attacks in New York, or those who bombed the Metro in Spain? Will the representatives of the French people support those who killed the innocents in France?

How is it possible for them to stand against individuals like Mohammed Merah in France and yet support others like him in Syria? How can France fight terrorism in Mali and support it in Syria? Will France adopt the American model of double standards? How can the parliamentarians convince the French public that their country is secular, yet at the same time it supports extremism and sectarianism in other parts of the world? How can France advocate for democracy but yet one of its closest allies – Saudi Arabia – is still living in medieval times?

My message to the French Parliamentarians is: go back to the principles of the French Revolution that the whole world is proud of: Liberty, Justice, Equality.

Le Figaro: You cited French national interests; if France intervened militarily, would their interests in Syria or the region be targeted?

President al-Assad: I do not know if your interests will be targeted or not, this will depend on the consequences of the war. But most certainly, France will lose its interests. There is hatred and contempt towards French policy, which would inevitably directly affect French interests in the region. In addition, unlike previous times, significant countries in the region have started to look away from Europe towards the East for alternative partnerships where there is mutual respect between countries.

Le Figaro: So you are calling out for rationality and reason?

President al-Assad: For rationality and ethics.

Le Figaro: Are you planning to run for office in the next presidential elections?

President al-Assad: This really depends on the will of the Syrian people at the time. If I feel that there is a strong public desire for to me to run, I will not hesitate and vice versa. We may not have accurate measures at the moment, but we do have strong indications. The strongest indicator is that when you are fighting terrorists from over 80 countries who are supported by Western and Arab states, if your people do not embrace you, you simply cannot carry on. Syria has been resilient for two-and-a-half years this is an important indication of strong public support.

Le Figaro: Mr. President how much are you prepared to fight in this crisis?

President al-Assad: We have two options: we either defend our country against terrorism or we surrender. The history in this region has never known surrender; it has seen many wars, yet it has never and will never surrender.

Le Figaro: So will fight and sacrifice your life for Syria?

President al-Assad: When it becomes a matter of patriotism, we will all fight to defend our country – whether we are citizens or the president, it is not about the individual but rather about the whole nation. What is the point in living if your country is dead?

Le Figaro: Mr. President, do you take responsibility for the mistakes that have been committed including those by the army and the security forces? Do you accept that mistakes have been made?

President al-Assad: Any human being makes mistakes in their work. If you do not make mistakes you are either not human or you do not work. I am a human being and I work. However, when you want to evaluate your mistakes you need to do so in hindsight when the events are behind you and you are able to see the results of your actions. We are currently in the heart of the battle; when it is over, we can assess the results and determine whether we were right or wrong on particular matters.

Le Figaro: Are you confident of winning the battle?

President al-Assad: The history of our region teaches us that when our people defend themselves, they inevitably win. This is not a war against the President or the Government alone, it is a war against the entire country, and we shall be victorious.

Le Figaro: Having said this, your army has lost control over certain areas in the North, East and South. Do you believe that you can regain these areas?

President al-Assad: The issue is not about labeling areas as being under our control or under the control of the militants; there isn’t a single area that the army has planned to enter and not been able to do so. The real challenge is the continuous influx of terrorists from across the borders and the acts they have perpetrated at a social level in the areas they have infiltrated.

Le Figaro: Moratinos, a previous friend of yours, told me few days ago that he cannot understand what is in Bashar al-Assad’s mind, how could he possibly commit such violence in his country.

President al-Assad: There is an analogy that can also be asked here: how could France allow the killing of the terrorists who terrified French citizens? How did the British deal with the riots in Britain last year? Why was the army deployed in Los Angeles in the nineties? Why are other countries allowed to fight terrorism and Syria isn’t? Why is it forbidden for Mohammed Merah to stay alive in France and to kill civilians and yet terrorists are allowed to remain alive in Syria and kill innocent people?

Le Figaro: Mr. President, how has your daily routine changed in terms of leading the country since the beginning of the crisis? Some suggest that after two-and-a-half years Bashar al-Assad is leading the country alone.

President al-Assad: This is what I meant earlier, if the West is against me and so were the Syrian people, if I was alone, how could I conceivably be leading the country? This is illogical. I can continue to lead because of the strength of public support and the strength of the Syrian state. Unfortunately, those in the West do not view this reality objectively.

Le Figaro: Mr. President, a number of French journalists have been held in Syria. Do you have any idea of their situation? Are the Syrian authorities holding them?

President al-Assad: Do you mean that we are holding them?

Le Figaro: They were taken hostage in the North of Syria; do you have information on their fate?

President al-Assad: If they were taken hostage by the terrorists, you will have to ask them. If anyone is arrested by the government for entering the country illegally, they will be taken to court rather than being held in jail. They would face charges according to Syrian law and this would be public knowledge.

Le Figaro: Are you looking to cooperate with France on security issues? This was an area that went well in the past.

President al-Assad: Any cooperation, be it security, military or economic requires political consensus. You cannot maintain security cooperation with any country when there is a conflict of interests.

Le Figaro: When your father passed away, you visited France and were received by President Chirac. Everyone viewed you as a youthful and promising president and a successful ophthalmologist. Today, since the crisis, this image has changed. To what extent have you as a person changed?

President al-Assad: The more imperative question is: has the nature of this person changed? The media can manipulate a person’s image at a whim, yet my reality remains the same. I belong to the Syrian people; I defend their interests and independence and will not succumb to external pressure. I cooperate with others in a way that promotes my country’s interests. This is what was never properly understood; they assumed that they could easily influence a young president, that if I had studied in the West I would lose my original culture. This is such a naïve and shallow attitude. I have not changed; they are the ones who wished to identify me differently at the beginning. They need to accept the image of a Syrian president who embraces his country’s independence.

Le Figaro: Has France become an enemy of Syria?

President al-Assad: All those who support the terrorists financially or militarily are enemies of the Syrian people. Anyone who facilitates the killing of a Syrian soldier, or works against the interests of Syria and her people is an enemy of Syria. I am not referring to the French people since I believe that the French government is working against the interests and will of its people. There is a difference between the concepts of adverse government and adverse nation. The French people are not our enemy but the policy of their government is one that is adverse to the Syrian people.

Le Figaro: Is the French government an enemy of Syria?

President al-Assad: The more adverse the policies of the French government are to the Syrian people, the more the government is an enemy to the Syrian people. The current policies, that we mentioned earlier, adopted by the French leadership are hostile towards Syria. This hostility can only end when the French government readdresses its policies.

Both top brass and regular servicemembers express opposition to US involvement

Paul Joseph WatsonInfowars.com September 2, 2013

Image: Twitter

The military revolt against the Obama administration’s plan to launch a potentially disastrous attack on Syria is gathering pace, with both top brass and regular servicemembers expressing their vehement opposition to the United States becoming entangled in the conflict.

The backlash began to spread on social media yesterday with numerous members of the military posting photos of themselves holding up signs stating that they would refuse to fight on the same side as Al-Qaeda in Syria. The photos went viral, with one post alone generating over 16,000 shares on Facebook.

Others have posted their photos on Twitter alongside the hashtag #IdidntJoin.

This will do little to reassure a growing number of influential figures in the US military who are becoming increasingly recalcitrant about the United States becoming embroiled in yet another war in the Middle East.

The Washington Post reports that, “The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.”

Republican Congressman Justin Amash also took to Twitter to state, “I’ve been hearing a lot from members of our Armed Forces. The message I consistently hear: Please vote no on military action against Syria.” Amash’s statement was followed by a series of tweets from military veterans who also expressed their opposition to the attack.

Business Insider’s Paul Szoldra also spoke to “sources who are either veterans or currently on active duty in the military,” and asked them if they supported military escalation in Syria.

“Most have responded with a resounding no,” writes Szoldra.

He quotes an active duty First Class Sergeant who states, “We are stretched thin, tired, and broke,” adding that the United States “(does not) need to be World Police.”

“Our involvement in Syria is so dangerous on so many levels, and the 21st century American vet is more keen to this than anybody. It boggles my mind that we are being ignored,” adds former Cpl. Jack Mandaville, a Marine Corps infantry veteran with 3 deployments to Iraq.

Not only are military personnel going public with their concerns, Politico reported that leaks of attack plans are also, “emanating from a Pentagon bureaucracy less enthusiastic about the prospect of an attack than, say, the State Department, National Security Council or Obama himself,” unauthorized disclosures that have the White House “peeved”.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the official US Marines website and left an astoundingmessage calling on US soldiers to join the Syrian Army in fighting Al-Qaeda (click for enlargement).

The full text of the message reads:

“This is a message written by your brothers in the Syrian Army, who have been fighting al-Qaida for the last 3 years. We understand your patriotism and love for your country so please understand our love for ours. Obama is a traitor who wants to put your lives in danger to rescue al- Qaida insurgents.

Marines, please take a look at what your comrades think about Obama’s alliance with al-Qaida against Syria. Your officer in charge probably has no qualms about sending you to die against soldiers just like you, fighting a vile common enemy. The Syrian army should be your ally not your enemy.

Refuse your orders and concentrate on the real reason every soldier joins their military, to defend their homeland. You’re more than welcome to fight alongside our army rather than against it.

Your brothers, the Syrian army soldiers. A message delivered by the SEA.”

View a selection of US servicemembers expressing their opposition to the attack on Syria via the #IdidntJoin meme on Twitter below.

Why is the Obama administration so determined to have the U.S. military help al-Qaeda win the civil war in Syria? Why are we being told that the U.S. has “no choice” but to help rabid jihadist terrorists that are slaughtering entire Christian villages, brutally raping Christian women and joyfully beheading Christian prisoners? If you are a Christian, you should not want anything to do with these genocidal lunatics. Jabhat al-Nusra is a radical Sunni terror organization affiliated with al-Qaeda that is leading the fight against the Assad regime.

If they win, life will be absolute hell for the approximately two million Christians in Syria and other religious minorities. According to Wikipedia, Jabhat al-Nusra intends “to create a Pan-Islamic state under sharia law and aims to reinstate the Islamic Caliphate.” As you will seebelow, many members of the U.S. military understand this, and they absolutely do not want to fight on the side of al-Qaeda.

Not that we should be supporting Assad either. Assad is horrible. He should be rotting in prison somewhere. But just because a country has a bad leader does not mean that we have justification to attack them.

The U.S. military should only be put into action when there is a compelling national interest at stake. And getting involved in a bloody civil war between Assad and al-Qaeda does not qualify.

For the moment, we have a little bit of time to educate the American people about this because the Obama administration has decided to try to get the approval of Congress before striking Syria. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail.

Unfortunately, some members of the U.S. Congress are actually trying to push Obama into even stronger action. In fact, some Senators are now saying that they will not support military intervention in Syria unless it is a part of an “overall strategy” to remove Assad from power.

If the U.S. does try to remove Assad, it will unleash hell in the Middle East. Syria has already threatened to attack Israel if the U.S. tries to remove Assad and so has Hezbollah.

As I mentioned the other day, right now there are 70,000 Hezbollah rockets aimed at Israel.

When Hezbollah and Syria start sending rockets into the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel will respond with even greater force.

And if a single one of those rockets that land in Tel Aviv have an unconventional warhead, Israel will respond by absolutely flattening Damascus.

When I say that, what I mean is that a city of 1.7 million people will be gone permanently.

Do our politicians have any idea of the hell that they are about to unleash?

Do our leaders actually want Israel to be attacked?

Do our leaders actually want major cities in the Middle East to be completely wiped out?

Do our leaders actually want millions of precious people to die?

As I mentioned above, those serving in the U.S. military understand these things better than most people, and right now many of them are expressing a very strong desire to stay out of this conflict.

According to a tweet from U.S. Representative Justin Amash, he has heard from numerous members of the U.S. military that are urging him to vote against an attack on Syria…

“I’ve been hearing a lot from members of our Armed Forces. The message I consistently hear: Please vote no on military action against #Syria.”

Journalist Paul Szoldra says that he has also heard from a lot of service members that want nothing to do with this conflict…

I’ve reached out to my own sources who are either veterans or currently on active duty in the military, and asked them to share their thoughts on whether we should, or should not, intervene in the two-year-old Syrian civil war. Most have responded with a resounding no.

The following is what a Marine Corps infantry veteran with three deployments to Iraq named Jack Mandaville wrote to Szoldra…

The worst part about this Syria debacle, among many things, is how closely it resembles Iraq. Those Vietnam veterans who warned us about disastrous results in Iraq were doing so based off their experience in a war that, contrary to popular belief, was vastly different from our war and was separated by at least two decades. Many veterans of Iraq are still in their twenties and have a firsthand understanding of Arab political issues. The complicated things we faced with Syria’s next door neighbors is freshly ingrained in our memories. How quickly the American people and our political leaders forget.

Our involvement in Syria is so dangerous on so many levels, and the 21st century American vet is more keen to this than anybody. It boggles my mind that we are being ignored. My anger over this issue has actually made me seriously comment on our foreign policy for the first time since 2006 when I was honorably discharged after three stints in Iraq and subsequently watched it continue for nearly another six years. I’m sickened that we’re putting ourselves in a position for another prolonged war where the American people will quickly forget about the people fighting it.

And even an establishment mouthpiece like the Washington Post is admitting that top U.S. military officials are expressing “serious reservations” about a war with Syria…

The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.

Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.

One officer even told the Post that he “can’t believe” that Obama is even considering a conflict with Syria…

“I can’t believe the president is even considering it,” said [one] officer, who like most officers interviewed for this story agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because military personnel are reluctant to criticize policymakers while military campaigns are being planned.

What Obama wants to do is utter insanity.

Why would we want to enter a war on the side of Christian killers?

In areas of Syria that are controlled by the rebels, Christians are being treated brutally. The following is from eyewitness testimony from a Christian missionary who recently visited the region…

“The Christian residents were offered four choices: 1. renounce the ‘idolatry’ of Christianity and convert to Islam; 2. pay a heavy tribute to the Muslims for the privilege of keeping their heads and their Christian faith (this tribute is known as jizya); 3. be killed; 4. flee for their lives, leaving all their belongings behind.”

How would you like to be faced with those choices?

In other instances, Christians are not even given any choices. Instead, they are being summarily executed for their faith.

Syrian rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to dogs, according to a nun who says the West is ignoring atrocities committed by Islamic extremists.

The nun said taxi driver Andrei Arbashe, 38, was kidnapped after his brother was heard complaining that fighters against the ruling regime behaved like bandits.

She said his headless corpse was found by the side of the road, surrounded by hungry dogs. He had recently married and was soon to be a father.

How would you feel if a member of your family was beheaded and fed to the dogs?

And the rebels have continued to slaughter Christians even though they know the world is watching. The following is from an NBC News report on August 18th…

Syrian rebels killed at least 11 people, including civilians, in an attack on a checkpoint west of the city of Homs on Saturday that official state media described as a massacre.

Most of those killed were Christians, activists and residents said.

Sometimes these psychotic Syrian rebels actually round up Christian women and children and gun them down. The following is from a report about what the rebels did to the Christian village of al-Duvair when they took control…

Images obtained exclusively by Infowars show the aftermath of an alleged massacre of a Christian village in Syria during which men, women and children were slaughtered and churches desecrated by Obama-backed FSA rebels.

The photos, which were provided by a source inside the village of al-Duvair in Syria’s Western province of Homs, show ruined homes, ransacked churches as well as the burned remains of what looks like an infant.

According to the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) on May 29, “The armed rebels affiliated to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) raided the Christian-populated al-Duvair village in Reef (outskirts of) Homs near the border with Lebanon….and massacred all its civilian residents, including women and children.”

But sometimes women are not killed by the rebels. If they are young and lovely, they are often systematically raped. What happened to one 15-year-old Christian girl from Qusair named Mariam is a total abomination…

The commander of the battalion “Jabhat al-Nusra” in Qusair took Mariam, married and raped her. Then he repudiated her. The next day the young woman was forced to marry another Islamic militant. He also raped her and then repudiated her. The same trend was repeated for 15 days, and Mariam was raped by 15 different men. This psychologically destabilized her and made her insane. Mariam, became mentally unstable and was eventually killed.

This is who Obama wants to help?

We are going to shed American blood to help those monsters take over Syria?

Are we insane?

Of course one of the most prominent examples of rebel brutality was even reported on by CNN…

The ghastly video shows how barbaric the Syrian civil war can be.

A man, said to be a well-known rebel fighter, carves into the body of a government soldier and cuts out his heart and liver.

“I swear to God we will eat your hearts out, you soldiers of Bashar. You dogs. God is greater!” the man says. “Heroes of Baba Amr … we will take out their hearts to eat them.”

He then puts the heart in his mouth and takes a bite.

After reading that, can anyone out there possibly justify helping the Syrian rebels?

But the Obama administration insists that we “must” attack Syria because Assad supposedly used chemical weapons against his own people.

Secretary of State John Kerry says that samples taken by UN inspectors have tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, and therefore what we must do is clear.

But is it really?

According to Reuters, the UN has had evidence that Syrian rebels have been using sarin gas against Assad forces since May…

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

And as I discussed the other day, Syrian rebels have admitted to an Associated Press reporter that they were the ones that used sarin gas during the incident that the Obama administration is so concerned about.

The chemical weapons were supplied to the rebels by Saudi Arabia, but the Obama administration will never, ever admit this. If the U.S. called the Saudis out on this, it would potentially endanger the status of the petrodollar.

Instead, the U.S. government is going to end up doing exactly what the Saudis want, which is to attack Syria.

“I would not understand or comprehend that Bashar al-Assad, no matter how bad a man he may be, would be so stupid as to order a chemical weapons attack on civilians in his own country when the immediate consequence of which might be that he would be at war with the United States. So this reeks of a false flag operation.”

Sadly, it doesn’t really seem to matter what any of us think. According to James Rosen of Fox News, the Obama administration has apparently made the decision to go ahead with an attack on Syria no matter what Congress decides…

A senior State Department official tells Fox News the president’s decision to take military action in Syria still stands, and will indeed be carried out, regardless of whether Congress votes next week to approve the use of such force.

The official said that every major player on the National Security Council – including the commander-in-chief – was in accord last night on the need for military action, and that the president’s decision to seek a congressional debate and vote was a surprise to most if not all of them. However, the aide insisted the request for Congress to vote did not supplant the president’s earlier decision to use force in Syria, only delayed its implementation.

“That’s going to happen, anyway,” the source told me, adding that that was why the president, in his rose Garden remarks, was careful to establish that he believes he has the authority to launch such strikes even without congressional authorization.

Very soon, the U.S. military will be embroiled in a vicious civil war between a brutal dictator and absolutely psychotic Christian-killing jihadists.

After President Obama said the United States “should” strike Syria during a Saturday speech in the Rose Garden, Republican Justin Amash (R-Mich.) took to Twitter to dispute that claim with comments from those who would likely carry out that order.

“I’ve been hearing a lot from members of our Armed Forces,” Amash tweeted. “The message I consistently hear: Please vote no on military action against Syria.”

I’ve reached out to my own sources who are either veterans or currently on active duty in the military, and asked them to share their thoughts on whether we should, or should not, intervene in the two-year-old Syrian civil war. Most have responded with a resounding no.

The general theme of most emails bring up personal experiences in Iraq or Afghanistan, the lack of a clear objective or end state in striking Syria, and the very muddled line between anti-government rebels and al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists.

While President Obama has repeatedly said there would be no “boots on the ground,” many remain fearful that limited strikes could have consequences that lead to further action.

Here are two emails I received, and I am reprinting them here in full, only lightly edited for clarity.

From an active-duty soldier, rank of Sergeant First Class:

I have to say I am fairly conflicted about Syria. My logic is generally fighting itself and my personal feelings towards taking action.

Part of me says that we need to take a stand against chemical weapons. President Obama announced that using chemicals weapons was the line, and Assad crossed it. The fact that even the French President has called for “proportional and firm action” says something. I’m not sure how the UN can stand by while Syria kills 1300 citizens, including women and children. The line was drawn, and Assad crossed it.

But does the U.S. always have to be the one to deliver consequences? We are stretched thin, tired, and broke. My personal feeling is no.

I’m more inclined to be ok with our involvement if we’re talking about actions by the Air Force and the Navy. We are too tired to put boots on the ground. But as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal tech, I know what would go into disarmament of chemical weapons.

And that’s just not a job I want anything to do with. And I don’t want my Soldiers doing it.

Not only is the process long and exhausting, it’s dangerous in different ways than we have been dealing with.

My gut is telling me that we don’t need to be World Police. And if we don’t have the UN for back up, it’s just too much for us to take on. We still haven’t finished Afghanistan; I just don’t see how we can take on another war, or even military actions that don’t affect us.

I can’t stand to sit by and watch innocent lives be taken in such a horrible manner, but we can’t really do this alone.

But if we don’t do something, who will? How many more innocent people have to die before anyone else will take action?

In mid-March of 2003, I was a 19-year-old Private First Class waiting to cross the border into Iraq. I was aware that there was a significant portion of veterans (mostly Vietnam-era) back home who were fundamentally opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Like the majority of my peers and superiors, I didn’t really care nor did I give it much thought. We just wanted our war.

A little over 10 years later, the majority of individuals in my generation have recognised the Iraq folly for what it was. I’m still proud of my service, as are my buds, but we understand that Iraq was completely unnecessary and cost way too much money and, more importantly, American lives.

We witnessed our politicians and countrymen send us to war on a surge of emotion and quickly forget about us for nearly a decade. We had the training and capabilities to deal with Iraq, but were set up for failure by timid members of Congress and the Executive branch who futilely attempted to conduct a PC war.

The worst part about this Syria debacle, among many things, is how closely it resembles Iraq. Those Vietnam veterans who warned us about disastrous results in Iraq were doing so based off their experience in a war that, contrary to popular belief, was vastly different from our war and was separated by at least two decades.

Many veterans of Iraq are still in their twenties and have a firsthand understanding of Arab political issues. The complicated things we faced with Syria’s next door neighbours is freshly ingrained in our memories. How quickly the American people and our political leaders forget.

Our involvement in Syria is so dangerous on so many levels, and the 21st century American vet is more keen to this than anybody. It boggles my mind that we are being ignored.

My anger over this issue has actually made me seriously comment on our foreign policy for the first time since 2006 when I was honorably discharged after three stints in Iraq and subsequently watched itcontinue for nearly another six years.

I’m sickened that we’re putting ourselves in a position for another prolonged war where the American people will quickly forget about the people fighting it.

Are you a military veteran? Send me an email with your thoughts on possible military action in Syria (anonymity protected if preferred) — pszoldra@businessinsider.com

U.S. officials are increasingly worried that Syria’s weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists, rogue generals or other uncontrollable factions.

Last week, fighters from a group that the Obama administration has branded aterrorist organization were among rebels who seized the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo, where research on chemical weapons had been conducted. Rebels are also closing in on another base near Aleppo, known as Safirah, which has served as a major production center for such munitions, according to U.S. officials and analysts.

***

A former Syrian general who once led the army’s chemical weapons training program said that the main storage sites for mustard gas and nerve agents are supposed to be guarded by thousands of Syrian troops but that they would be easily overrun.

The sites are not secure, retired Maj. Gen. Adnan Silou, who defected to the opposition in June, said in an interview near Turkey’s border with Syria. “Probablyanyone from the Free Syrian Army or any Islamic extremist group could take them over,” he said.

***

As the Syrian opposition steadily makes territorial gains, U.S. officials and analysts said the odds are increasing that insurgents will seize control of a chemical weapons site or that Syrian troops guarding the installations will simply abandon their posts.

“It’s almost inevitable,” [Michael Eisenstadt, a retired Army officer who directs the military and security studies program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy] said. “It may have already happened, for what we know.”

***

Last week, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said the al-Nusra Front — an anti-Assad group that has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and is also known as Jabhat al-Nusra — had seized a chlorine factory near the town of Safirah, east of Aleppo. “Terrorist groups may resort to using chemical weapons against the Syrian people,” the ministry cautioned.

Questions remaining about who actually controls some of Syria’s chemical weapons stores ….

A report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence outlining that evidence against Syria includes a few key caveats — including acknowledging that the U.S. intelligence community no longer has the certainty it did six months ago of where the regime’s chemical weapons are stored ….

U.S. and allied spies have lost track of who controls some of the country’s chemical weapons supplies, according to the two intelligence officials and two other U.S. officials.

***

U.S. analysts … are also not certain that when they saw what looked like Assad’s forces moving chemical supplies, those forces were able to remove everything before rebels took over an area where weapons had been stored.

U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad’s orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said.

***

Another possibility that officials would hope to rule out: that stocks had fallen out of the government’s control and were deployed by rebels in a callous and calculated attempt to draw the West into the war.

In August, Fox News interviewed Rep. Mike Rogers, R.-Mich., who said he saw a chemical weapon stockpile in the country during a 2004 trip. At the time, he said the U.S. was concerned about “thousands of pounds of very active mustard gas.”

Spread across the desert here off the Sirte-Waddan road sits one of the biggest threats to Western hopes for Libya: a massive, unguarded weapons depot that is being pillaged daily by anti-Gadhafi military units, hired work crews and any enterprising individual who has the right vehicle and chooses to make the trip.

In one of dozens of warehouses the size of a single-family home, Soviet-era guided missiles remain wrapped inside crates stacked to the 15-foot ceiling. In another, dusted with sand, are dozens of sealed cases labeled “warhead.” Artillery rounds designed to carry chemical weapons are stashed in the back of another. Rockets, antitank grenades and projectiles of all calibers are piled so high they defy counting….

Convoys of armed groups from all over Libya have made the trek here and piled looted weapons into trailer trucks, dump trucks, buses and even empty meat trucks….

In the desert near Sirte, there was no security for dozens of small armories at the complex, where weapons are removed every day by opposition fighters, paid contractors and others. In one structure, the word “warhead” was stamped on dozens of sealed containers. At another depot, empty chemical agent munitions were found.

There is at present no viable Libyan government-sanctioned force with the capacity to keep freelancer fighters from taking what they please from the warehouses, according to the Journal.

***

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) visited the Libyan capital, where he said gaining control over the country’s armories was a “very big topic.”

“We have a game plan to secure the weapon caches, particularly biological and chemical weapons,” McCain said.

Al Qaeda terrorists in North Africa could be in possession of chemical weapons, a leading Spanish intelligence officer said on Monday.

The head of National Police counter-terrorist intelligence, Commissioner-General Enrique Baron, told a strategic security conference in Barcelona that it was believed that the self-styled Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb – AQMI – could have acquired such arms in Libya or elsewhere during the Arab Spring last year.

***

Commissioner Baron told his audience: “The Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb has acquired and used very powerful conventional arms and probably also has non-conventional arms, basically chemical, as a result of the loss of control of arsenals.”

The most likely place where this could have happened was in Libya during the uprising which overthrew the Gaddafi regime, said Commissioner Baron.

In his position as the head of Spanish National Police intelligence the Commissioner-General works closely with MI6, the CIA and other Western European intelligence services.

Remember, the head of the Libyan rebels admitted that the rebels were largely Al Qaeda. CNN, theTelegraph, the Washington Times, and many other mainstream sources confirm that Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya have since flooded into Syria to fight the Assad regime … bringing their arms with them. And the post-Gaddafi Libyan government is also itself a top funder and arms supplier of the Syrian opposition. (CNN notes that the CIA may have had a hand in this operation.)

The Turkish General Directorate of Security … seized 2 kg of sarin gas in the city of Adana in the early hours of yesterday morning. The chemical weapons were in the possession of Al Nusra terrorists believed to have been heading for Syria.

Revealed: Government let British company export nerve gas chemicals to Syria

The Government was accused of “breathtaking laxity” in its arms controls last night after it emerged that officials authorised the export to Syria of two chemicals capable of being used to make a nerve agent such as sarin a year ago.

The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, will today be asked by MPs to explain why a British company was granted export licences for the dual-use substances for six months in 2012 while Syria’s civil war was raging and concern was rife that the regime could use chemical weapons on its own people. The disclosure of the licences for potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride, which can both be used as precursor chemicals in the manufacture of nerve gas, came as the US Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States had evidence that sarin gas was used in last month’s atrocity in Damascus.

Mr Kerry announced that traces of the nerve agent, found in hair and blood samples taken from victims of the attack in the Syrian capital which claimed more than 1,400 lives, were part of a case being built by the Obama administration for military intervention as it launched a full-scale political offensive on Sunday to persuade a sceptical Congress to approve a military strike against Syria.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills insisted that although the licences were granted to an unnamed UK chemical company in January 2012, the substances were not sent to Syria before the permits were eventually revoked last July in response to tightened European Union sanctions.

In a previously unpublicised letter to MPs last year, Mr Cable acknowledged that his officials had authorised the export of an unspecified quantity of the chemicals in the knowledge that they were listed on an international schedule of chemical weapon precursors.

Downing Street insisted today that Britain’s system for approving arms exports to Syria is working even though licences for two chemicals capable of being used in making nerve gas were approved by the Government and blocked only by EU sanctions.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “You see the system working, with materials not exported. The facts are that the licences were revoked and the exports did not take place. The Prime Minister’s view is that that demonstrates that the system is working. There is a sanctions regime, which is a very active part.”

Critics of the Business Secretary, whose department said it had accepted assurances from the exporting company that the chemicals would be used in the manufacture of metal window frames and shower enclosures, said it appeared the substances had only stayed out of Syria by chance.

The shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna told The Independent: “It will be a relief that the chemicals concerned were never actually delivered. But, in light of the fact the Assad regime had already been violently oppressing internal dissent for many months by the beginning of 2012 and the intelligence now indicates use of chemical weapons on multiple occasions, a full explanation is needed as to why the export of these chemicals was approved in the first place.”

The Labour MP Thomas Docherty, a member of the Commons Arms Export Controls Committee, will today table parliamentary questions demanding to know why the licences were granted and to whom.

He said: “This would seem to be a case of breath-taking laxity – the Government has had a very lucky escape indeed that these chemicals were not sent to Syria.

“What was Mr Cable’s department doing authorising the sale of chemicals which by their own admission had a dual use as precursors for chemical weapons at a time when the Syria’s war was long under way?”

The licences for the two chemicals were granted on 17 and 18 January last year for “use in industrial processes” after being assessed by Department for Business officials to judge if “there was a clear risk that they might be used for internal repression or be diverted for such an end”, according to the letter sent by Mr Cable to the arms controls committee.

Mr Cable said: “The licences were granted because at the time there were no grounds for refusal.”

Although the export deal was outlawed by the EU on 17 June last year in a package of sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the licences were not revoked until 30 July. Chemical weapons experts said that although the two substances have a variety of uses such as the fluoridation of drinking water, sodium and potassium fluoride are also key to producing the chemical effect which makes a nerve agent such as sarin so toxic.

Western intelligence has long suspected the Syrian regime of using front companies to divert dual-use materials imported for industrial purposes into its weapons programmes. It is believed that chemical weapons including sarin have been used in the Syrian conflict on 14 occasions since 2012.

Mr Cable’s department last night insisted it was satisfied that the export licence was correctly granted. A spokesman said: “The UK Government operates one of the most rigorous arms export control regimes in the world.

“The exporter and recipient company demonstrated that the chemicals were for a legitimate civilian end-use – which was for metal finishing of aluminium profiles used in making aluminium showers and aluminium window frames.”

MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian news agency Interfax says President Vladimir Putin hopes to send a delegation of lawmakers to the U.S. to discuss the situation in Syria with members of Congress.

Russian legislators Valentina Matvienko and Sergei Naryshkin proposed that to Putin on Monday, saying polls have shown little support among Americans for armed intervention in Syria to punish its regime for an alleged chemical weapons attack.

The lawmakers said maybe U.S. legislators can be persuaded to take a "balanced stance" on the issue. Putin supported the initiative, which would require formal approval by the Foreign Ministry.

Russia has been a stalwart ally of Syria’s Bashar Assad, and Putin spoke out on Saturday against the prospect of U.S. military intervention in Syria, calling such a move "foolish nonsense" that "defies all logic."

Russia sends spy ship as US prepares for possible Syria strike

Vladimir Putin said the ship was needed to protect national security interests. Russia has a naval facility in the Syrian port of Tartous. Photograph: Itar-Tass/Barcroft Media

Russia is sending a reconnaissance ship to the eastern Mediterranean as the US prepares for a possible military strike in Syria, it was reported on Monday.

The Priazovye left Russia’s naval base in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol late on Sunday on a mission "to gather current information in the area of the escalating conflict", said an unidentified military source quoted by the Interfax news agency. The defence ministry declined to comment.

Barack Obama said on Saturday he would seek congressional authorisation for punitive military action against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after what the US says was a sarin gas attack that killed more than 1,400 people.

Russia says the US has not proved its case and that it believes the attack was staged by rebels to provoke intervention in the civil war.

Russia is one of Assad’s biggest arms suppliers and has a naval maintenance facility in the Syrian port of Tartous. Moscow opposes any military intervention in Syria and has shielded Damascus from pressure at the UN security council.

Interfax said the Priazovye would be operating separately from a navy unit permanently stationed in the Mediterranean in a deployment that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said is needed to protect national security interests.

The defence ministry said last week that new warships would be sent to the Mediterranean to replace others in a long-planned rotation of ships based there.

Syria asks the United Nations to stop U.S. strike

BEIRUT | Mon Sep 2, 2013 4:46am EDT

(Reuters) – Syria has asked the United Nations to prevent "any aggression" against Syria following a call over the weekend by U.S. President Barack Obama for punitive strikes against the Syrian military for last month’s chemical weapons attack.

Washington says more than 1,400 people, many of them children, were killed in the world’s worst use of chemical arms since Iraq’s Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in 1988.

U.S. military action will be put to a vote in Congress, which ends its summer recess on September 9, giving President Bashar al-Assad time to prepare the ground for any assault and try to rally international support against the use of force.

In a letter to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and President of the Security Council Maria Cristina Perceval, Syrian U.N. envoy Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari called on "the U.N. Secretary General to shoulder his responsibilities for preventing any aggression on Syria and pushing forward reaching a political solution to the crisis in Syria", state news agency SANA said on Monday.

He called on the Security Council to "maintain its role as a safety valve to prevent the absurd use of force out of the frame of international legitimacy".

Ja’afari said the United States should "play its role, as a peace sponsor and as a partner to Russiain the preparation for the international conference on Syria and not as a state that uses force against whoever opposes its policies".

Syria denies using chemical weapons and accuses rebel groups, who have been fighting for more than two years to topple Assad, of using the banned weapons. At least 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which started in March 2011 with protests against four decades of Assad family rule.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that tests showed sarin nerve gas was fired on rebel-held areas on August 21.

Ja’afari said Kerry had "adopted old stories fabricated by terrorists" based on fake photos from the Internet.

Make no mistake: The president couldn’t care less about the plight of Syrians, the 1,500 gassed to death — including nearly 500 children. It’s all about 2014. Win the House, reign supreme.

Consider this: Mr. Obama made his dramatic Rose Garden statement Saturday — then headed to the golf course. Congress has no plans to cut short its 30-day vacation, and the president did not call lawmakers back. So much for urgency.

The conventional wisdom is, as usual, wrong. Losing the congressional vote won’t be an embarrassment for the president, as all the talking heads are still parroting. A loss would be a double win. First, because a “No” vote would allow the foreign policy neophyte to walk away from his blundering “red line” declaration on chemical weapons (“I wanted to go in, but Congress said no”). And second, should Republicans who voted for theIraq and Afghanistan wars now oppose Syria, the president would be armed with clear “evidence” that their opposition is purely political.

Keep in mind: This president knows no way to campaign other than to blame others. He’ll batter Republicans for all of 2014 as obstructionists should they be the reason the effort fails.

But the bloviating politicos are also wrong that the “Republican-controlled House” could reject the plan for partisan reasons. It is Democrats who seem most squeamish — and they were the most vocal in demanding their say before intervention in Syria. Remember, two years ago, as the president prepared to bomb Libya, 70 Democrats joined Republicans in voting against military operations. Mr. Obama bombed anyway.

Still, the entire fiasco has been hard to watch, “Amateur Hour” indeed. The president declares a “red line,” then sees the Syrian dictator cross it again and again. The Nobel Peace Prize winner declares he’ll take America to war — but only then does he seek partners and only to find a “Coalition of the Unwilling.” The United Nations says no, the Arab League says no, China and Russia say no — even the United Kingdom says no (mainly because Brits did not want to have another U.S.-led war jammed down their throats).

Still, the president and his secretary of state are absolutely right. “The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity,” John F. Kerry said. Mr. Obama, in his most powerful passage, said: “Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?”

Of course a firm response is the correct action. And Mr. Obama doesn’t need authority to do so in Syria, just as he didn’t in Libya. While Republican support on the Hill now would help Mr. Obama save face after his “red line” throw-down, striking Syria with a few cruise missiles — however fleeting and ineffectual that would be to the course of its 2-year-old civil war — also would send a signal to the real target: Iran. That’s why, most likely, Republicans will support the president after rewriting the White House’s draft resolution.

Now, it is up to Mr. Obama’s own party: Does he still hold sway over Democrats? Will they bend to his will? Many already seem to be running for the hills. And if they don’t, will the president have the temerity to order strikes anyway?

Whatever happens, this much is clear: We’re no longer talking about the IRS targeting tea party groups, the Justice Department tapping reporters’ phone lines, the NSA’s surveillance programs, Benghazi. The president has smartly changed the subject to the most important decision a commander in chief makes: war.

And the most presidential. That, he knows, will play better in the midterm elections, whichever way Congress votes.

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times and is now editor of the Drudge Report. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.

(CNSNews.com) – While President Barack Obama is now asking Congress to authorize him to use military force against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad because that regime used chemical weapons on its own people, the State Department is maintaining a travel warning advising Americans not to travel to Syria because the al-Nusrah Front, the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria–which is participating in the rebellion seeking to overthrow Assad–has carried out about 600 attacks in the country since November 2011.

These al Qaeda terrorist attacks, according to the State Department, have killed many Syrian civilians.

"There is also a threat from terrorism, including groups like al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) affiliated al-Nusrah Front," says the current State Department travel warning on Syria. "Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks–ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations—in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. Public places such as government buildings, shopping areas, and open spaces have been targeted."

The bolded language in this travel warning–emphasizing that the al Qaeda affiliate fighting in the Syrian opposition has been targeting places such as "shopping areas" was put there by the State Department in the online posting of its warning.

"During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed," then-State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said at the department’s press briefing last Dec. 11.

In a statement published May 16, the State Department said that Muhammad al-Jawlani, the leader of the al-Nusrah Front, had recently "pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qa’ida’s leader."

When the Obama Adminisration first officially named the al-Nusrah Front as an al Qaeda affiliate and a terrorist organzation, other elements in the Syrian rebel coalition–which the Obama administration supports–objected to what the Obama Administration had done.

"In December 2012, the Obama Administration designated the Nusra Front as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and as an alias of Al Qaeda in Iraq pursuant to Executive Order 13224," said a Congressional Research Service report published on June 14. "Reactions from some Syrian opposition leaders and armed groups were negative. Several armed groups made statements of solidarity with Al Nusra, and prominent civilian figures, including then-President Khateeb of the SC [National Coalition of Revolution and Opposition Forces], requested that the U.S. government reconsider the designation."

At a regular press briefing, Hong said, "China is firmly opposed to the use of chemical weapons by any party in Syria and expresses serious concern about preparations by relevant countries for unilateral military action."

Hong said the United States has explained to China its evidence relating to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

"Any action by the international community should respect the rules of the UN Charter and basic rules of international relations," Hong said,adding that taking actions should avoid further complicating the Syria issue and avoid bringing more disaster to the Middle East.

China supports the UN Secretariat in carrying out an independent, objective and professional investigation on the alleged use of chemical weapons in accordance with relevant UN resolutions.

Hong said that no side should rush to pre-judge the results of an investigation by UN chemical weapons experts in Syria, saying that a political solution is the only practical way to solve the issue.

While still claiming dictatorial powers to start a war on his own authority, Obama put his unilateral attack on Syria on hold when he received a letter from more than 160 members of the House of Representatives reminding him that to take the country to war without congressional approval is an impeachable offense and when he saw that no country that could serve as cover for a war crime, not even the puppet British government and the NATO puppet states, would support America’s announced military aggression against Syria.

Obama got away with attacking Libya without an OK from Congress, because he used Washington’s NATO puppets and not US military forces. That ploy let Obama claim that the US was not directly involved.

Now that the lack of cover and the challenge from Congress has caused the would-be tyrant Obama to put on hold his attack on Syria, what can we expect?

If Obama were intelligent, and clearly anyone who would appoint Susan Rice as his national security adviser is not intelligent, he would simply let the attack on Syria fade into the background and die as Congress returns on September 9 to face the insoluble problems of the budget deficit and debt ceiling.

A competent administration would realize that a government that is unable to pay its bills without heavy use of the printing press is in far too much trouble to be worrying about what is going on in Syria. No competent administration would risk a military strike that could result in a Middle East conflagration and a rise in oil prices, thus worsening the economic situation that Washington faces.

But Obama and his collection of incompetents have demonstrated that they have no competence. The regime is also corrupt, and the entire edifice rests on nothing but lies.

Now that the White House realizes that Obama cannot commit a war crime without cover, here is what we can likely expect. The argument will move away from whether or not Assad used chemical weapons and become an argument that Congress must not undermine US prestige and credibility by failing to support President Obama, the latest front man for American wars of aggression.

The White House will bribe, cajole, and intimidate the Congress. The regime’s argument will be that with America’s prestige and credibility on the line, Congress must support the President. The President and Secretary of State have made unequivocal statements of Assad’s guilt and their determination to punish Assad. Given Washington’s insanity, the way Washington punishes Assad for (allegedly) killing Syrians with chemical weapons is for Washington to kill more Syrians with cruise missiles.

If this doesn’t make sense to you, you don’t belong in Obama’s government or in the American media, and you could never be a neoconservative.

The White House will argue that Obama has compromised with Congress by letting Congress vote on the decision, and that Congress’ part of the compromise is to give its support. Meet us half-way, the White House will say.

The Israel Lobby, Susan Rice, the neocons, and warmongers such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham will argue that lack of support for Obama’s attack on Syria hurts America’s credibility, aids the “terrorists” and “leaves America defenseless.” It is bad enough, they will argue, that Obama has shown indecision by waiting for Congress’ approval and irresolution by substituting a limited strike for the original plan of regime change.

Faced with threats of a cutoff of campaign donation munificence from the Israel Lobby and the military/security complex, the House and Senate can be brought into line to “support the country” as it commits another war crime. The combination of bribes, intimidation, and patriotic appeals to support America’s prestige can swing the Congress. No one really knows if the 160 or so members of the House are sincere about putting Obama on notice, or whether they simply want something. Perhaps they only want Obama to cough up for their approval.

If Congress gives its backing to another American war crime, British Prime Minister David Cameron can go back to Parliament and tell them that Obama “has now brought Congress on board, thus providing cover, and if Parliament doesn’t go along we will be cut out of the money.”

Few British politicians, other than George Galloway, are comfortable with being cut out of the money.

If Cameron brings Parliament around, the other NATO countries might decide to get on the payments bandwagon. The overriding rule of Western civilization is that more money is better than no money.

Washington and its NATO European puppets will criticize Russia and China for using their Security Council vetoes to block the UN from bringing justice, freedom, and democracy to Syria. These faux arguments will be used by the presstitute Western media to undermine the importance of the UN Security Council’s opposition to Washington’s attack on Syria. Why should Washington be deterred by Security Council members who support Assad’s use of chemical weapons, the US media whores will ask. The prostitutes that comprise the US media will do all in their power to ensure that Washington kills yet more Syrians. Killing is America’s hallmark.

As the history of humankind proves, people will do anything for money. Noteworthy exceptions are Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, and Julian Assange. Were any of these truth-tellers to have gone to Washington and say, “buy me,” in exchange for their silence Washington would have provided large fortunes with which they could live a life of comfort.

Considering how corrupted the US government is and how determined Washington is to have its way, the UN chemical weapons inspectors are at risk. It is unlikely that they will have an accident like SEAL Team Six. But unless they are sequestered like a jury, they are targets for bribery. If the UN report doesn’t support the White House position, the Secretary General will be pressured to make the report inconclusive. After all, Washington writes the checks that keep the UN in business.

No one should expect the US Congress to vote on the basis of the evidence. Moreover, Congress has so far shown no understanding that regardless of whether Assad used chemical weapons, it is a war crime for the US to commit naked aggression against Syria, a country that has not attacked the US. It is not Washington’s business how the Syrian government puts down the effort by al-Nusra extremists to overthrow it.

Washington itself has contingency plans to use nuclear bunker busters against Iran’s underground nuclear energy facilities. If Washington believes that weapons of mass destruction are impermissible, why does Washington have so many of them and contingency plans to use them? Is Washington regretful that Washington dropped two nuclear bombs on civilian Japanese cities at the very time that the Japanese government was doing everything in its power to surrender?

Ever since the dangerous Cold War ended, hot war has been the mainstay of US foreign policy. George H.W. Bush attacked Iraq after Bush’s ambassador gave Saddam Hussein the green light to attack Kuwait. Clinton attacked Serbia on false pretenses and without any constitutional or legal authority. George W. Bush attacked Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis of lies. Obama renewed the attack on Afghanistan and has attacked also Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. Obama sent his NATO puppets to attack Libya, sent mercenaries into Syria, and now intends to prevent his mercenaries’ defeat by attacking Syria.

Washington is building a string of military bases around both Russia and China. These bases are extremely provocative and foretell nuclear war.

The US, a country with a vast nuclear weapons arsenal, whose political leaders are both corrupt and insane, is a great danger to life on earth. That Washington is the number one danger to the world is now universally recognized, except by Americans who wear their patriotism on their sleeve. These gullible dupes are the enablers of the demise of humanity by war.

Until the US economy collapses, Washington still has printed money, and it can buy acquiescence to its crimes. Washington can rely on the presstitute media to tell its lies as if they were facts. The world will not be safe until the American house of cards collapses.

I feel sorry for those uninformed Americans who think that they live in the best country in the world. Too few Americans care that their government has destroyed countless lives from Central America and Vietnam to the Middle East and Africa. The US military routinely murders civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and is responsible for as many as 1,000,000 Iraqi deaths and 4,000,000 displaced Iraqis. The American definition of “the best country in the world” is the country that can murder the most innocent people, people who have never attacked America, people who once looked upon America as the hope of the world and now see a deadly threat.

Too many Americans have no idea that one-fifth of their fellow citizens are dependent on government support, or if they do know, they blame the unfortunate for being leeches on the taxpayers’ purse. In the US wages and employment opportunities are declining. There are no impediments to the looting of citizens by financial institutions. There are no constraints on the lawlessness and brutality of the police, and no limit to the lies that keep the American population entrapped in the Matrix unaware of reality.

How such a people can retain liberty or restrain a government committed to war strains the imagination.

Those Republicans who worry about our children’s and grandchildren’s debtburdens are worried about a future that might never come about. Washington’s hubris is pushing the world toward nuclear war.

“The best country in the world” is the evil force that is destroying the lives and prospects of many different peoples and might yet destroy all life on earth.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.

Obama’s proposal seeks broad war power despite vow of limits

President Barack Obama, joined by Vice President Joe Biden, delivers a statement on Syria in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., Saturday, August 31, 2013. | Kristoffer Tripplaar/MCT

By Michael Doyle | McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — While President Barack Obama insists he wants only a limited air attack on Syria, his proposed authorization of force would empower him to do much more than that. Congress is likely to impose tighter reins, as lawmakers have learned that presidents are prone to expand on powers once granted

The substantive part of Obama’s proposed authorization of the use of military force, conveyed to congressional leaders over the weekend, contains 172 words. That’s significantly more than either the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution authorizing the Vietnam War or the 2001 resolution authorizing retaliation for the 9/11 terror attacks, two measures that later became notorious for how aggressively presidents used them.

The proposed resolution gives Obama a go-ahead to use the military as he “determines to be necessary and appropriate in connection with the use of chemical weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in the conflict in Syria.” Specifically, the president could act to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of the weapons or to “protect the United States and its allies and partners” from the weapons.”

Tellingly, University of Texas Law School Professor Robert Chesney said in an interview, Obama’s proposed authorization did not include a sunset date. Chesney suggested that “if the administration is serious about wanting to act in such a truly narrow, time-limited way,” then a sunset measure could be useful.

“These details may not matter much if all the president intends is a modest shot across the bow, as he suggested a few days ago,” said George Mason University School of Law Professor Ilya Somin Sunday. “But they could be significant if U.S. military intervention goes beyond that – including if it ends up expanding farther than the president may have originally intended.”

Publicly, Obama has repeatedly said that “we would not put boots on the ground.” His proposed authorization, though, did not limit the kinds of military forces that could be used. It also does not specify the forces against which force can be used.

“It would likely allow him to use force against Syrian rebels as well as the Assad regime, if it seems possible that the former have obtained chemical weapons or are likely to do so,” Somin said.

Obama’s proposed authorization would also allow military action to stop the “transfer to terrorist groups or other state or non-state actors” of the designated weapons. This includes actions involving weapons transfers “within, to or from Syria,” which potentially extends authority to act well outside Syria itself.

If it passed the House and Senate, the authorization would meet the domestic U.S. requirements of the War Powers Resolution, as well as give the Obama administration some political cover. It would not, however, necessarily address international legal requirements.

“Unfortunately, the president’s draft (authorization) states a violation of international law in every line,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a University of Notre Dame law professor. “Resort to military force is not permitted to punish the use of banned weapons; to address arms proliferation, or to respond to vague threats to the United States.”

National self-defense or actions explicitly authorized by the United Nations’ Security Council are the only two kinds of military action acceptable under international law, O’Connell explained.

Stymied by Russia and China, the United States has not been able to secure approval from the 15-member U.N. Security Council. Unlike the 1999 intervention in Kosovo, in which the United States led a 78-day bombing campaign, the Obama administration has not received a NATO authorization for action against Syria, either.

When political bodies do provide military authorizations, the resulting actions can grow beyond what some may have originally contemplated.

In March 2011, for instance, the U.N. Security Council authorized a “no-fly zone” in Libya and gave a go-ahead for “all necessary measures” to protect civilians. NATO forces, including U.S. warplanes, ultimately reported flying more than 26,000 sorties. The NATO air attack destroyed or damaged approximately 6,000 military targets, with several European country leaders pressing the alliance to act more aggressively toward Libyan government forces.

The congressional authorization of military action following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks has been used even more aggressively.

The measure authorized “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons (the president) determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

The Bush and Obama administrations have subsequently invoked the post-9/11 authorization to support at least 30 different actions, including undertakings in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and the Philippines, the Congressional Research Service noted.

On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry declined to be pinned down on what might happen if Congress rejects an authorization of force against Syria, though he several times stressed the president’s inherent power to act in the nation’s self-defense.

“He has the right to do that no matter what Congress does,” Kerry said on CNN’s State of the Union program. “But the President believes, and I hope we will prove to the world, that we are stronger as a nation, our democracy is stronger when we respect the rights of the Congress to also weigh in on this.”

The Obama administration has made it clear that it will ignore Congress even if lawmakers vote no to military intervention in Syria and launch the attack anyway.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

While Obama’s surprise decision to seek Congressional authorization for the attack has prompted speculation that he is creating a clever exit strategy after painting himself into a corner with a year of unsustainable “red line” rhetoric, administration officials have signaled that next week’s scheduled vote will make little difference to a decision that has already been made.

Fox News’ James Rosen was told by a senior State Department official that, “the president’s decision to take military action in Syria still stands, and will indeed be carried out, regardless of whether Congress votes next week to approve the use of such force.”

Although Obama’s announcement that he would put the issue to Congress came as a surprise, the official said it had no impact on the fact that Obama has already decided to green light the attack no matter which way lawmakers vote.

“We don’t contemplate that the Congress is going to vote no,” said Kerry, adding that Obama has the right to order attacks “no matter what Congress does”.

Indeed, Obama himself alluded to the notion that the outcome of a Congressional vote had little significance during his speech on Saturday when he stated, “Our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive,” adding, “It will be effective tomorrow or next week or one month from now, and I am prepared to give that order.”

The Congressional vote seems less about getting the nod for a “limited” military strike and more about expanding the scope of the intervention and possibly greasing the skids for open ended war and regime change, with the White House’s draft proposal giving Obama “the authority to do way more” than surgical strikes, reports MSNBC.

However, with the administration already acknowledging that the vote will merely be ceremonial, and with more US warships moving towards Syria, it seems that the attempt to secure congressional approval is merely window dressing in anticipation of an attack that has already been decided upon.

Even though President Obama delayed his golf outing Saturday to announce that he will solicit authorization from Congress before launching a military attack on Syria, there are reports out of Washington that this is but a formality.

In a move that only adds to the utter confusion that defines the president’s foreign policy, a senior State Department official tells Fox News that Obama’s decision to take military action in Syria still stands, and will indeed be carried out, regardless of whether Congress votes next week to approve the use of such force.

Chief Washington correspondent James Rosen reported that this official said Obama’s decision to seek a congressional vote was a surprise to members of the National Security Council, but insisted the request for Congress to vote did not supplant the president’s earlier decision to use force in Syria, only delayed its implementation.

“That’s going to happen, anyway,” the source told Rosen, adding that that was why the president, in his Rose Garden remarks, was careful to establish that he believes he has the authority to launch such strikes without congressional authorization.

Why would “a senior State Department official be so forthcoming?

There were suggestions that Secretary of State Kerry “lost” to the chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff in the interagency process and this was a way to refute this claim, according to Fox News.

“Absolutely untrue,” the Kerry aide said, adding that everything Kerry said in his dramatic remarks on Friday was after “fully consulting with the White House.”

Obama uses phrase ‘my military’; blood pressures rise!

President Obama gave the egotistical game away Friday when he referred to U.S. armed forces as “my military” during a White House news conference explaining pending action against Syria.

“… I have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options,” he said. “We have consulted with allies. We’ve consulted with Congress …” (Check out the video below)

Bad move.

A guy who ticked off half the country last year when he told Americans who own successful businesses “you didn’t build that” looks pretty hollow claiming ownership over something the country inarguably built collectively.

And it didn’t take long for Twitter to come alive:

Obamaphiles who are used to making excuses for His Eloquence will probably call it a slip of the tongue, but considering it was followed immediately by “our team,” you get the impression Obama was saying exactly what he thought.

He probably does think of the military as his own. And he’s got some reasons:

He’s got a lapdog secretary of defense in Chuck “I won’t be in a policy-making position” Hagel. He’s surrounded by generals who’ve spent five years coming up with rationalizations for liberal positions like why having gays openly serving in the military is a great idea, why women should be in combat, and how, given the witch-hunt atmosphere of sexual assault in the military these days, every 18-year-old man in uniform is a rapist-in-waiting.

But having reasons for thinking so is no excuse for blurting it out, particularly on the eve of attacking another country that poses no military threat to the United States whatsoever — and never has – in what is, at bottom, a fit of imperial pique. (And even emperors have the class to say “our.”)

One thing Obama’s going to learn, fast and hard, if he goes through with dragging this country into attacking Syria:

There really is no “I” in war.

************************

USS Nimitz carrier group sails into Red Sea in ‘prudent’ move

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON | Mon Sep 2, 2013 3:30pm EDT

(Reuters) – The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and four other ships in its strike group moved into the Red Sea early on Monday, U.S. defense officials said, describing the move as "prudent planning" in case the ships are needed for military action against Syria.

The officials said the Nimitz entered the Red Sea around 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), but the strike group had not received any orders to move into the Mediterranean, where five U.S. destroyers and an amphibious ship, the USS San Antonio, remain poised for possible cruise missile strikes against Syria.

Moving the Nimitz into the Red Sea was aimed at putting more U.S. assets in place if they are needed to support what U.S. officials still describe as a limited attack against Syria after it used chemical weapons against civilians.

"It does place that strike group in a position to respond to a variety of contingencies," said one official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The nuclear-powered Nimitz is accompanied by the Princeton, a cruiser, and three destroyers – the William P. Lawrence, Stockdale and Shoup, according to the officials.

They said there had been no change regarding six U.S. Navy ships now in the eastern Mediterranean, but military planners were reassessing the situation given a delay in the cruise missile strikes that had been expected this past weekend.

President Barack Obama on Saturday backed off imminent strikes by the destroyers off the coast of Syria until Congress had time to vote its approval. Defense officials said the delay gave them more time to reassess which ships and other weapons will be kept in the region – and whether some may be allowed to leave. Congress returns to Washington September 9.

The U.S. Navy doubled its presence in the eastern Mediterranean in the past week, effectively adding two destroyers to the three that generally patrol the region, and diverting the San Antonio, which carries four massive CH-53 helicopters and 300 Marines, from another mission.

Two of the destroyers were due to be relieved but are now serving along with the ships that were to replace them.

PRUDENT DEPLOYMENT

It was not immediately clear how long those ships would be asked to remain in the eastern Mediterranean, but officials suggested that changes could be made to the current fleet there in coming days.

The destroyers are carrying a combined load of about 200 Tomahawk missiles, but officials say a limited strike on Syria could be accomplished with half that number.

Retired Admiral Gary Roughead, who served as chief of naval operations during the 2011 strikes on Libya, said the Navy’s decision to move the carrier into the Red Sea meant it was closer to the "points of tension."

"It’s a prudent move that provides for maximum naval flexibility in the region," Roughead, who is now a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, told Reuters. "It is not unusual to move carriers around in North Arabian Sea and Red Sea as events dictate."

Reuters reported Sunday that officials had rerouted the Nimitz carrier group, which was due to sail east around Asia to return to its home port in Everett, Washington, after being relieved in recent days by another aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman.

Officials said the USS Kearsarge, a large-deck amphibious ship, remained in North Arabian Sea, and there were no plans to move the ship into the Red Sea.

The Kearsarge, which carries 6 AV-8B Harriers, 10-12 V-22 Ospreys and helicopters, played a key role in the 2011 strikes on Libya. Two Ospreys launched from the ship helped rescue a downed F-15 pilot during that operation.

A deluge of duty military personnel as well as many veterans are taking to Twitter to express their opposition to the Obama administration’s plan to launch an attack on Syria.

After numerous US servicemembers posted photos of themselves holding up signs on Twitter refusing to fight on the side of Al-Qaeda in Syria, the meme developed into several different hashtag trends, including #IdidntJoin and #VetsOnSyria.

Congressman Justin Amash, a vocal critic of the Obama administration’s build-up to war, has been inundated with tweets from active duty military members and veterans in anticipation of a House vote on authorization of military action which is set to take place next week.

Many members of Congress have expressed dissatisfaction at the evidence presented to them by the administration in behind closed door meetings.

In a related development, the French government released an intelligence report today which alleged “massive use of chemical agents” by the Syrian government last month. The report was “based… in part on dozens of videos culled by French intelligence services.” In other words, this damning “intelligence” report relies primarily on YouTube videos of the attack, which offer no clues whatsoever to who the culprits even were.

French president Francois Hollande has called for bombing Syria. Photo: Guillaume Paumier

Socialists love war. Mussolini was a socialist before he invented fascism. He engaged in mass murder in Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia and helped his fascist buddy Franco win the Spanish Civil War. Hitler was a socialist, although establishment historians deny this. Nazi, after all, is short for Nationalsozialismus, or national socialism. Hitler came to power with the help of German industrialists and American bankers. It was the ruling elite who fostered socialism and fascism, the most effective control systems yet imposed on humanity.

Authoritarian control freaks have used the policy of siege socialism to consolidate power and impose iron-fisted rule. Hitler used it to conquer the Sudetenland and then the rest of Europe. Socialists opposed to imperialism and violence perpetuated by the state often understand how communists use naked and violent power to conquer and dominate. Michael Parenti, for instance, writes how the Soviet system was a form of siege socialism, a “beleaguered and therefore unattractive and grim kind of socialism,” asJacques T. Pauwels writes.

Socialism’s love affair with violence continues to this day. Thus it is not surprising that Francois Hollande – the current president of France, the first secretary of the French Socialist Party and a co-prince of Andorra – is one of Obama’s most ardent supporters. Like Obama, Hollande wants to illegally bomb Syria and either kill (like Gaddafi was killed) or merely depose its current leader, Bashar al-Assad.

Despite the fact the French people, like the American people, are not interested in attacking Syria, Hollande has enthusiastically called for attacking the country. “The chemical massacre of Damascus cannot and must not remain unpunished,” Hollande said in an interview on Friday with the newspaper Le Monde, according to USA Today. “There are few countries that have the capacity to inflict a sanction by the appropriate means. France is one of them. We are ready,” he said.

Hollande cited a document handed down from French intelligence and leaked to the Journal du Dimanche. It states that the Syrian government has “several hundred tons of mustard gas” and “sarin (gas)” and claims that at least 281 deaths can be attributed to the attack in areas outside Damascus.

Although widely viewed as a milquetoast socialist bureaucrat, Hollande showed his chops and taste for state violence and intervention in the affairs of other countries in January when he sent troops to chase Islamic fanatics around northern Mali. Now he wants to send troops into Syria – or at least stand on the sidelines cheering as the United States bombs the country back to the Stone Age.

Obama is a socialist, too, although not of the European pedigree, a lineage that produced some of the worst mass murderers in history. That’s why he loves war and organized mass murder just like his comrade Francois Hollande. War is a political tool same as rigging election boxes and strong-arming the opposition.

Of course, this really isn’t fair. Because Obama and Hollande, while they might be politically socialist, have very little to do with the decisions that lead to war and invading small and largely defenseless countries. Despite the control system – socialism, communism, and “democracy” (where we are said to control ourselves) – the global elite invariably use violence to gain control and steal valuable assets.

“War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it,” said Mussolini, the Nietzsche-loving nihilist, socialist journalist, newspaper editor, and fascist dictator.

Such machismo is no longer required as an excuse to wage state violence against targeted victims. Now we do it for the children. Government wages modern war under the banner of humanitarianism. It’s even more effective when a woman – for instance, Samantha Power – does the arguing that neighborhoods in Damascus should be leveled in exchange for a dictator using chemical weapons (never mind this cannot be verified).

It works much more effectively than the old style of conquering nations and shuffling around pawns on the geopolitical chessboard.

This 21st century Hitler has His finger on the button and would love nothing more than to Push It

He and his Criminal gang will Bring Humanity into WWIII weather the People Want it or not… We the people of the world must stop this Insane Psychopathic Tyrant in his tracks NOW and bring him and his past and present cronies to Justice for the war crimes against so many people in so many countries globally since WWII

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